⚠️ Early Preview. This is a work-in-progress version of the site. Features are still being built and things may change or break. Your feedback is welcome!
How OpenWorldLab works
OpenWorldLab gives research groups a public page they control. On it, a group publishes its findings, advertises its open positions, and raises money for specific pieces of work. Groups can be linked to the department and university they belong to, so anything a lab publishes also appears on those pages automatically.
This page explains what the platform does, how information and money move through it, and what it costs.
What the platform does for you
Choose the description that fits how you would use OpenWorldLab.
Publish your work, recruit, and raise money for a specific project
Your group gets a public page at its own address. You decide who in the group can write posts, manage job listings, and handle the group’s payment settings.
Set up the group page
Choose the address your page lives at (for example /group/oxford-optics), add your colleagues, and give each of them the
permissions their job needs. If your department already has a page, link yours to
it.
Post findings and open positions
Write short updates — the platform calls these sparks — for day-to-day results, and full articles for longer pieces. Advertise PhD, postdoc, and technical vacancies on the job board.
Run a campaign
Connect your group’s bank account through Stripe, write up what the money is for, and submit the campaign for review. Once approved, contributions transfer to your account as they arrive.
How posts and money move through the platform
The three diagrams below are interactive. Use the buttons under each one to see what happens when a lab publishes something, when someone contributes to a campaign, and when a group belongs to more than one institution.
A lab publishes; the department and university pages update themselves
The situation: A university has several faculties, and each faculty has its own labs. The labs know their own work best, but a university page assembled by hand goes stale within weeks.
What the platform does: Each lab publishes on its own page, under its own name. Whatever it publishes also appears on the faculty page it is linked to, and from there on the university page.
Pick a group in the diagram, then publish an article, post a job, or open a campaign from it. Then cut a link and publish again to see where things stop.
Why a link can be cut
A lab appearing on a university's page is a public claim about that university, so the university has to be able to withdraw it. If a group starts publishing work the institution will not stand behind, or the affiliation simply ends, cutting the link removes that group's content from the institution's pages immediately — without touching the group itself, which keeps its own page, its posts and its own bank account.
The same control exists at every level, because every link is the same kind of connection: a university can cut off a faculty just as a faculty can cut off a lab. Forming a link needs both sides to agree; leaving one does not — either side can act alone.
Pick a group in the diagram, then publish an article, post a job, or open a campaign from it. Then cut a link and publish again to see where things stop.
How this compares with a research grant
OpenWorldLab is not a replacement for grant funding. It suits smaller, well-defined costs that a grant cycle is too slow or too rigid to cover. The differences that matter:
| Research grant | OpenWorldLab campaign | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical scale | Salaries, multi-year programmes, large capital | A named cost: an instrument, reagents, field time, a licence |
| Time to money | Months of proposal writing and peer review before a decision | Days: draft the campaign, pass compliance review, then run it for as long as you choose |
| Who decides | A review panel, against the funder’s priorities | The people who choose to contribute, against your own case for the work |
| Deductions | Institutional indirect costs, commonly 30–55% of the award | A 5% platform fee, which also covers card processing. Whether your institution treats the remainder as subject to its own overhead policy is a question for your finance office. |
| Where the money lands | Institutional accounts | The group’s own Stripe account, verified in the group’s name |
| Reporting | Formal reports to the funder | Public updates on the campaign page, read by anyone who contributed |
| Intellectual property | Governed by the funder’s terms and your institution’s policy | Unchanged: OpenWorldLab takes no ownership and no licence. Your institution’s policy still applies. |
What a campaign of a given size involves
Set the amount your group needs to receive. The figures on the right show what backers would have to be charged in total, and roughly how many people that means.
A campaign’s goal is measured in money that reaches the group, so the total charged to backers is higher than the goal by the amount of the fee. The contributor estimate assumes an average contribution of $80; your own figure will depend on your audience and the tiers you offer.
A group can instead let backers cover the fee at checkout, in which case each contribution reaches the group in full. The exact terms are set out in the Fundraising Policy.
Common questions
Where to go next
Look through the campaigns currently raising money, browse open research positions, or read the Help Centre for the full documentation.