CEO off ScienceMatters wants to revolutionize Journal Business
The best scientific journals (so-called. Journal) are in the professional world extremely coveted. Scientists want to publish at any cost their research results in a top journal. The Journals therefore have a free hand in the selection of items that they publish. Many good observations are therefore never published and are lost. Science Matters wants to change this. Learn in an interview with the CEO Lawrence Rajendran what bothers him in the current ecosystem and how he wants to revolutionize it.
(Picture l.t.r. you see: Lawrence Rajendran CEO of ScienceMatters, Prof. John Ioannidis and Prof. Tom Südhof from Stanford University, both are in the Scientific Advisory Board)
Please describe briefly yourself.
My name is Lawrence Rajendran and my start-up is called Science Matters. I am originally from the south of India and studied in India. Then I moved to Israel to study further. In Germany I did research as a graduate student, and finally I came to Switzerland and studied at University of Zurich.
Describe the idea of Science Matters in 1-3 sentences
Science Matters is a kind of Instagram for scientists to publish their findings and to share them. On Instagram, you can publish anything on Science Matters this will not work, because we apply our triple quality assurance procedures to any published research results.
Since when does ScienceMatters exist?
The core idea I had about 7 years ago when I moved from Germany to Switzerland. It was a very stressful time. At that time I realized that the current system of scientific publications harms itself. Researchers should tell a story and present a concrete case. So the discovery of a new bacterium is worthless in the eyes of publishers, if you can’t show that one can produce a new antibiotic.
The recent journals work well, but there are many published articles and there is a severe competition between various journals. What’s your opinion?
Scientific Journals don‘t work very well: They basically make rich people richer at the expense of the poor. How does it work? The research at universities is mainly financed with taxpayer’s money. These research results are published by scientists for free in Journals. The university libraries then pay the journal to ensure that students and researchers have unrestricted access to the articles. Concretely Swiss Universities pay 3.6 to 3.8 million Swiss francs for access to a single journal publisher. The system is like the proverbial cash cow, scientists produce always free research, and sell the Journals expensive. This injustice we want to eliminate with ScienceMatters and open the system for anyone who wants to publish his research.
“Science Matters works like Lego for scientists.” – What do you mean by this statement?
Lego gives prior individual modules that you can combine freely. Journals function so that you have to have built a lot of Lego castles. In Science Matters we allow individual scientific observations and publish them on our website. Any other scientists can now add a further observation. This creates a block by block structure which can be extended by anyone. This creates a network of scientific observations which finally enter in a web of Science. Each observation has been simultaneously checked three times.
Who will publish its research results in Science Matters? Who is your target group?
At the moment, we focus on the 10 million scientists and researchers on Earth. Only 1% of all researchers publish more than one scientific relevant journal per year. When you publish in an open access journal it will cost between 1,500 and 2,000 USD. We want to change this. Everyone should be able to publish and we charge a price of $150. 75 USD go to the reviewer, because we want a high quality.
How do you earn money with Open Access?
At the moment the author paid $150. We also ask the libraries, whether they support our infrastructure. We were able to win the University of Zurich. In the long term financing will only come from the support programs such as the National Science Foundation and the Universities. The authors shouldn‘t have to pay.
What is your marketing strategy?
Currently we do not have a small marketing. We use only Facebook and Twitter, and of course our website. The marketing we just want to significantly expand and therefore we are still looking for good professionals in online marketing.
Are there takeaways from the establishment phase of ScienceMatters that you would like to share?
The hardest thing is to ensure that the start-up keeps being liquid. The problems that must be tackled are always the same, whether you are already a professor or a student. You have to convince the audience that they believe that your own product creates a benefit.
You need two types of skills to transform an idea into a start-up: First, you need the cash. But this is the smallest problem, because you can tackle it yourself. It is more difficult to change the mindset of customers. Here you have to convince other people that they get away from their habits and choose the new product.
What tools / platforms can you recommend for the construction?
Mostly my network helped me out. Through my network, I was able to find the right partners for the implementation, came up with new ideas and found an environment to establish the start-up.
What obstacles have you encountered?
The biggest obstacle was to find a good developer for the website. First, I naturally looked in India, but there I was dismissed from the firms, because I did not generate minimum revenues of $1 million. The partners must be covered by the business idea. I was lucky that I met Jonny. He has programmed a lot of our website and always has great ideas.
Which quote do you want to share with others?
„You should respect people, but not fear them.“
This is not a real quote, but more a kind of wisdom that accompanies me every day and helps me. As soon as one starts namely not to be afraid, you will be relaxed a lot and talking with people.
What are your next steps?
Our vision is to expand and change the system of scientific publications sustainably. To do this we must change the setting for the recent Journal System.
The second goal is to improve our platform, so it is very easy to publish their own research results. The ultimate goal is the establishment of an Internet of Science.
Really no matter if someone doesn’t be aware of afterward its up to other people that they will
help, so here it takes place.
Link exchange is nothing else however it is only placing the other person’s weblog link on your page at appropriate place and other person will also do similar in favor of you.