#Scifund is an experiment of ‘crowfunding’ for researchers. The idea behind #Scifund is to push scientists toward the world of crowfunding, to teach them how they can propose their research projects on a crowfunding website, and get people to contribute by helping funding them.

So, today #Scifund starts its first iteration. If you have an idea about a research project and you think that you can convince other people to fund it, you have about two weeks to prepare a draft proposal and post it to the #Scifund site. If you need more information, I suggest you to sign to their website and their mailing list.

It is important to note that the funding will not be collected on their website, but on a popular crowfunding website, RocketHub. The scope of #Scifund is not to do the collect the funding there, but to help researchers to prepare their applications to other crowfunding websites. #Scifund will be a web 2.0 website where researchers will compile applications in a online collaborative manner.

Personally, I think that crowfunding is a good idea for research. Of course, they won’t never be able to get the 70 millions dollars needed to test a new antibiotics, or the money needed to support a wet laboratory; but it may be a good resource for bioinformatics. Moreover, even though you are not interested in submitting a research proposal there, their website is a good resource for learning: have a look at their blog, and at all the useful tips they present.