Have Experiment? -- Need to Outsource? -- Contact Science Exchange. (August 22, 2011)

Elizabeth Irons had one of those Ahas and the result is a website, Science Exchange, which could do for experimental outsourcing what arXiv has done for the preprint.

NatureNews sent Zoë Corbyn to interview Dr Irons to get details:

It is an online marketplace for scientific experiments. Imagine eBay, but for scientific knowledge. You post an experiment that you want to outsource, and scientific service providers submit bids to do the work  [thereby] making it easy for researchers to access experimental expertise from core facilities with underutilized capacity.

[I got the idea when] I wanted to conduct some experiments outside my field, and realized that I needed an external provider. What followed was an entirely frustrating process, and when I found the provider it was difficult to pay them because they were outside my university's purchasing system.

[Science Exchange] allows institutions to make the most of their existing facilities, which means that they don't have to subsidize them as much. Also, if researchers can use Science Exchange to access the latest equipment, institutions can be more flexible about when they buy new instruments.

[We've got initial funding from] Ycombinator, a start-up accelerator programme in Mountain View, California, and angel investors. We have raised $320,000 so far and are looking to raise another $1 million. We have big plans to expand... We now have close to 1,000 scientists using our site and 50–100 signing up every day. More than 70 institutions have providers registered with us, including Stanford University in California, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and, of course, Miami [my institution]. Anyone from anywhere can use it.

[I believe Science Exchange could be] Totally disruptive. It could transform the current very inefficient use of funds and dramatically change the way in which scientists do research.