What are your long term plans with “scholarz.net”? What happens after the research project is expired? How do you ensure long term availability of the data? How do you plan to cope with the costs of maintanence and further development?
These are legitimate questions we have been asked in phone calls, chats and E-mails throughout the last weeks. Having launched our platform, it is now time for us to answer them. As a user you have a right to know who is managing your data and whether he is able to provide a secure frame for the future. We have been thinking much about these issues. In this article we present our answers:Remind: At the moment we are a research project at the University of Würzburg with two main pillars: A theoretical enquiery on “Scientific wor in the web 2.0″ and the attempt of putting the results of this enquiery into practice with our software “scholarz.net”. In addition to that there is this blog which a few of our members are writing alongside.
This is a very good frame for a research project, but not for the long term maintanence of an online-platform. Too much questions remain unanswered, especially legal ones.
That’s why we have decided to put “scholarz.net” on a firm footing: Out of our research project we’re founding an academic spinn-off: The “Better Research GmbH”. We are convinced that this is the best solution to provide and maintain attractive platform for academic research. As soon as the founding has taken place we will publish all relevant information on our webside. Nevertheless, the research project will go on, of course. The GmbH will only serve as a frame for running the platform.
What remains is the question how to finance the platform.
Everyone who is using a software for academic research expects a smoothly running solution fast servers, regular updates, proper service. There are enough semi-professional solutions in the web. Therefore we have decided: “Do it properly or don’t do it”. If we want to establish “scholarz.net” in the long run, we have to provide a solid and good solution. But: This needs money. Money we don’t have as academic offspring. There are two possibilities to solve this: Find a sponsor or charge a user fee.
Nothing has been decided yet and there is still much time. Until winter everything will stay as it is, we are financed. If no sponsor turns up until then we have thought of different options. The one that is most likely: We’ll offer a free account and an advanced premium account for 3€/month. This will hurt no one, and real improvement of your academic work will be worth it. On the other hand hopefully we’ll be able to gather enough to run “scholarz.net” and offer a top product with top service to the community. (But Note: Of course, you will never be charged for using data you have created during the beta phase. These will be available to you for free as long as “scholarz.net” exists.)
With the company foundation and the different possibilities to finance our project we are now working on a firm frame for the long term development of our platform. We are convinced that this will be good for both “scholarz.net” and its users.
What do you think? Do you agree?
At the end a nice picture: Veronika, Christian und Jens racking their brains in some issue at our last workshop:
Tags: basic issues, future
