Frequently Asked Questions
What is Experiment?
Experiment is a community for funding and sharing real scientific discoveries. Over 1,519,000 members supporting 1292 funded experiments are helping to push the boundaries of knowledge.
Does anyone review the projects?
One of our staff members reviews each submitted project. Projects that pass the content review are approved to launch publicly. See our start page for more information.
What are the evaluation criteria for projects?
Experiment supports hypothesis-driven and exploratory scientific research projects. Projects are reviewed for clarity, scientific accuracy, and feasibility. Read our researcher guide to learn more about our evaluation criteria.
How often are projects reviewed?
Projects are reviewed on a rolling basis, as they are submitted.
What happens if a fundraising campaign does not reach the goal?
Experiment is an all-or-nothing fundraising platform. If the project doesn't reach its goal, then none of the backers are charged.
Who funds projects on Experiment?
Everyone! That’s the beauty of the Internet, it allows anyone with a credit card to bring real science to life.
What is the reward for funding science?
Experiment researchers share the outcomes of their experiments directly with their backers. Usually this comes in the form of peer-reviewed journal publications, conference proceedings, academic posters, graduate theses, open data sets, and more.
What is the cost of starting a project?
It is free to start a project. If a project is fully funded, Experiment charges a 8% platform fee plus payment processing fees (roughly 3-5%). See our payouts guide for more information.
Is any institutional overhead included?
Experiment's policy is that funds transferred to researchers are not subject to institution overhead. Read our payouts guide for more information about working with your university.
Is Experiment a non-profit or for-profit organization?
Experiment is a mission-driven for-profit company. Though really, we're a happy melting pot of science, social entrepreneurship, and technology startup.
What are some examples of successful Experiment campaigns?
We've got case studies of funded campaigns.
What is the Open Access badge?
Projects with the Open Access badge mean that the researcher pledges to release all results of the project in an openly accessible way. Whether it's lab notes posted on Experiment or a final peer-reviewed article published in an open access journal, we encourage all researchers to do so. Click here to learn more about why Open Access is important.
How much technical information do I have to share about my experimental idea?
We only encourage transparency and openness as a way to help your backers understand the scientific impact, but there are many other ways to do so without giving up your secret sauce. Click here to learn more about this.
How do academic researchers use Experiment?
Experiment is often used to replace small grants for early-stage exploratory research. Other times, it’s used to supplement larger projects. Just don't treat it like a grant, with the expectation of writing a proposal and expecting money to come.
What is the funding success rate?
Experiment has a 48.8% success rate.
Can I delete my launched project?
Launched projects can not be deleted. Project campaigns that fail to reach their funding goal will no longer be discoverable by common search engines, but the URL will still exist.
Can I launch a project outside of the United States?
We currently support projects that wish to receive their funds to a bank account in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Australia. If you are conducting your research in another country, but have a bank account in one of our supported countries, you are eligible.
We intend to support researchers regardless of their bank account currency, but we are not there yet.
Are the donations tax-deductible?
Donations are tax deductible for select projects affiliated with 501(c)(3) organizations. These projects are labeled as tax-deductible on their campaign pages. If you donate to a tax-deductible project, you will be put into contact with an organization administrator who can send you a tax receipt.
If you are interested in launching a tax-deductible project, please see our researcher guide.
Can I get a refund?
No, all payments that are charged once a project has met its goal are final.
How do I reset my password?
You can go here to reset it.
How can I contact you?
Our team at Experiment would love to hear from you! You can email us directly. We like to write long-winded personal emails, and sometimes we attach pictures of cats and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Community Guidelines
Content Moderation
We take the responsibility for promoting content very seriously. It’s not just the ability to freely converse that makes a community, but also knowing that your opinions and expression will be fairly treated by the community.
On occasion, we will shadowban users if their behavior falls under any of our policies listed below. Shadowbanning will render that user's content invisible to other community members, but will allow that person to otherwise continue using the site normally.
1. Spam
If a user is spamming unrelated or irrelevant content (e.g. links to other pages, links to experiment campaigns), then that user will be warned once. If the spam continues, or it's clear that it's robotic, then we will ban the user.
2. Abuse / Harassment
In the case that a user is insulting, harassing, or creating an overly negative environment, then shadowbanning may be used. In most cases, a warning beforehand should be sufficient, but if it’s clear that the behavior will continue, then a ban will be put in place.
Disagreeing with someone on the internet is a pretty common thing, but we honestly try not to censor content just because someone may disagree with what was said. The goal of our policy is to continually improve our community.
Security
At Experiment we strive to make sure our community is secure.
If you would like to notify the team about any security issues, please email us. We reward handsomely in T-shirts and stickers.