Read the full story in Nature.
No papers? No problem. Scientists who have historically been at a disadvantage when pursuing traditional funding sources — for example, those who lack extensive experience or who do not demonstrate a good publication record — are now the most successful at sourcing money from the public.
But the money they net via crowdfunding websites tends to be smaller than grants secured from funding agencies, according to the team led by Henry Sauermann, a social scientist at the business school ESMT Berlin, Germany.