Make a request

Important: If your research is related to COVID-19, go here. You will have priority, won’t need an invitation, and will be able to make more general requests.

What we offer

If your research project needs a skill that you don’t have, we will put you in contact with an adequate expert who will help you via videoconference, e-mail or any other means.

Requirements to make a request

• You need an invitation (or a token). The fastest way to get one is to join Crowdfight and participate actively.
• Your research must have the potential of improving human health. However, it does not need to be directly applied to a disease (w actively support fundamental research). For example, any kind of research in Molecular Biology is eligible.

Types of eligible requests

1. Quick and high value

These are requests that:

• Can be solved quickly (at most a few hours).
• Benefit you greatly (your gain far exceeds the expert’s effort).

Typical examples:

• Help to set-up and/or troubleshoot a protocol.
• Advice about statistics or advanced topics on coding and theory.
• Discussion with a user of scientific equipment you consider buying.
• Discussion of ideas or hypotheses with an expert of a different field.
• Obtention of strains or reagents (you need to cover the shipping cost and any other significant expenses).
• Anything else that requires little effort from the expert and benefits you a lot.

2. Long term

You can also request collaborators for long-term projects (typically resulting in co-authorship of papers).

To make a request, fill the following form. For more information, see our Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently asked questions

What do you offer?

We will locate an expert in any field you need, and will put you in contact with them, so that they can advise you via videoconference, e-mail or any other means.

What kind of requests can I make?

The general rule is that it must require up to 1-2 hours from another researcher, and will save you a lot of time. Any request that can be addressed remotely and fulfills these conditions is eligible, but some examples are the following:

• Protocols and advice: An expert will send you an experimental protocol, will walk you through the steps via videoconference, and will be available to answer your questions as you execute it.
• Technical assistance on statistics, theory or computation: An expert will discuss your difficulty via videoconference. In some cases, they may be able to review your code or share some code with you.
• Discussion of ideas and hypotheses: An expert will discuss your idea with you, pointing to any literature they know that may have explored the same idea, and discussing its weaknesses and strengths.
• Reagents: You can request specific reagents, provided that they are difficult to find commercially, they are cheap to produce for the donor laboratory, and you cover the shipping expenses.

Who can use this service?

Any scientist in the biomedical sciences (for now you need to be invited and have a token). Scientists at any career stage can make a request, but they must be affiliated to an active research lab within a professional scientific institution.

What kind of experts can I request?

Any kind whatsoever. We are particularly focused on fostering cross-disciplinary collaborations, so you can request the help from an expert in any discipline.

Do I have to pay?

No.

I’m a student and need help with coursework. Can I use this service?

No. This service is only for scientists doing professional work.

How do I acknowledge the help I will receive?

Acknowledgment is appreciated, but not necessary. Experts will dedicate up to 1-2 hours to help you without any specific compensation (we document the process so that experts can show this activity as part of their CV). However, acknowledging the help of the expert in any publication would be nice. Acknowledging our platform is not a requirement either, but we also appreciate it. For example, you can use the sentence “The authors acknowledge the help of name_of_expert, contacted through Crowdfight (https://crowdfight.org)”.

What if I need more than 1-2 hours of help?

Then we may not be able to help you.

But what if I initially need only 1-2 hours, and later it becomes more?

Then it’s between you and the expert. Some requests may become long-term collaborations, in which the usual rules of scientific collaboration should apply (including co-authorship when appropriate). These long-term collaborations are a great by-product of our work, and we are happy to facilitate them, but we take no part in them.

I’m still not sure if my request is appropriate. What should I do?

Make the request anyway, and explain your doubts. We will tell you whether we can handle it or not.

How long does it take to process a request?

We aim for a 1-week turnaround time. You should get our first answer within hours, including a feasibility estimate, and you should be in touch with the expert within a week.

Why do you ask me to recommend an expert? I wouldn’t need your help if I could do that…

Recommending an expert is totally optional, and only applies for a minority of the requests. Besides finding the experts and contacting them, our mission is to provide the right incentives by documenting the whole process so that the experts get credit for helping you. For this and other reasons, it makes sense to contact certain experts through our platform even if you could do it directly.

Who are you, and why do you do this?

Crowdfight is a non-profit, run by volunteer scientists and engineers. We started to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, and we are doing this because we believe that it will benefit science and will make scientists’ lives easier. While most of the team members are scientists, Crowdfight is independent of our institutions.