The OPERAS Channel on the wemakeit platform
To promote the use of crowdfunding in its community, the OPERAS Research Infrastructure launched a dedicated channel on the crowdfunding platform wemakeit.com in December 2021: the OPERAS Channel.
We invite researchers from all Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines to run their crowdfunding campaign with the OPERAS channel, get tips from the wemakeit experts to boost their campaign and benefit from the support of the OPERAS community.
Whether you are an early career researcher in a university or other research institution, an independent researcher, or an established scholar looking to start a new line of research, the wemakeit platform is for you. No matter if you need funds to publish critical editions, to organise scientific exhibitions, to launch surveys and studies with local or global impact, the OPERAS channel is the way to go!
The first researchers that will launch their project campaign in early 2022 will, as a bonus, receive extra support by an external communication agency, funded by the French Ministry for Education, Research and Innovation!
How to get started
Are you curious about what crowdfunding can do for you and for the Social Sciences and Humanities? Just one hint: it is not just about money. Excited to crowdfund your research project and be supported by the OPERAS community? We can’t wait to learn more about your project idea!
All necessary information and the conditions of participation are available on the on the OPERAS channel web page of the wemakeit platform. You can find general information on how to start a project here and guidelines here. If you have further questions, please send us an email at operas@wemakeit.com.
On 13 January 2022, the first introduction workshop took place. Two science crowdfunding experts from wemakeit gave tips and tools to understand what crowdfunding is, how it can be applied to science, how to launch your own campaign on the OPERAS channel of wemakeit to collect financial support from the crowd, and how to communicate your research in the most exciting format. You can watch the recording of the event here and download the slides here. For upcoming OPERAS crowdfunding events, regularly check this web page.
Find a list of the Do’s and Don’ts of Crowdfunding here and a guide on how to prepare your campaign here. Both documents have been created by our partner wemakeit.
Further resources on crowdfunding (i.e. links to articles, papers, presentations) are here.
Why a collaboration of OPERAS and wemakeit?
OPERAS is the Research Infrastructure supporting open scholarly communication in the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) in the European Research Area. The aim of OPERAS is to make Open Science a reality for research in the SSH and achieve a scholarly communication system where knowledge produced in the SSH benefits researchers, academics, students and more generally the whole society across Europe and worldwide, without barriers.
OPERAS is creating a portfolio of different scholarly communication services at European level, addressing the specific needs of the research community. One of these services is the discovery platform GoTriple, developed by us, the TRIPLE project (2019–2023). It is through the TRIPLE project that OPERAS and wemakeit collaborate.
In addition to its core discovery function, the GoTriple platform integrates a range of other innovative services and tools, including a crowdfunding platform. Both platforms, GoTriple and the OPERAS channel from wemakeit, are interconnected to provide an ideal environment for SSH researchers and their projects.
wemakeit was founded in Switzerland in 2012 and is now one of the largest crowdfunding platforms in Europe, with a total of over 66 million Euro of backings, more than 5,500 successful projects and almost 500,000 community members.
wemakeit collaborates with a range of different partners, among them media partners, foundations, organisations and companies. OPERAS is one of them, and the OPERAS channel is one of currently 13 active channels and initiatives of wemakeit that back and support projects.