Bringing The Market to Science
Sitting Down With Elizabeth Iorns, CEO of Science Exchange.
Describe your company in the length of a tweet.
Science Exchange provides efficient access to the world's scientific expertise via an online marketplace of 1000+ expert providers
How does it work?
We are creating a big online network of scientific experts (providers) who can conduct experiments on a fee-per-service basis. The network comprises about 60 percent academic labs, 30 percent commercial and 10 percent government, and each one is verified by the Science Exchange team.
The website was designed very much with e-commerce in mind; we have advisors who have been part of successful online marketplaces like eBay, Open Table and Airbnb. It’s easy to use, and that has resonated with the community.
Describe your company in the length of a tweet.
Science Exchange provides efficient access to the world's scientific expertise via an online marketplace of 1000+ expert providers
How does it work?
We are creating a big online network of scientific experts (providers) who can conduct experiments on a fee-per-service basis. The network comprises about 60 percent academic labs, 30 percent commercial and 10 percent government, and each one is verified by the Science Exchange team.
The website was designed very much with e-commerce in mind; we have advisors who have been part of successful online marketplaces like eBay, Open Table and Airbnb. It’s easy to use, and that has resonated with the community.
What kinds of projects are being arranged on Science Exchange?
The most popular categories are next-generation sequencing, microarray analysis and mass spectrometry; other areas of interest to analytical science include HPLC and isotope analysis. The scope is wide, but also includes specialized techniques where expertise is rare. We want to be thoroughly inclusive: the more people that get involved, the better.
Where did the idea come from?
It came out of my own experiences in breast cancer biology research. All of my projects involved collaborations, either with core facilities at the university or external commercial service providers. But it was inefficient. I didn’t know who the best partners were, and I didn’t have information on pricing or reputation. What I needed was an easy-to-use website that gave a range of providers for a particular experiment, and feedback from previous users. So, I decided to create it.
At that point you changed your career direction? Big change!
Yes. I got accepted into Y Combinator, a startup accelerator program in California. This helped with the transition, taking me through all the steps to start a business. I have also continued to do scientific experiments using the Science Exchange network and have published papers on the work, so I have not cut all ties to the lab.
We were incorporated in May 2011. We now have six employees and are just about to expand. More than 400 of the top 600 US universities have listed providers on our site, so we’re strong in the US academic research space.
I’ve really enjoyed growing the business. It’s in many ways similar to running a lab. Both have a management component, an experimental component and a money-raising component.
How have research funders reacted?
Funding agencies and foundations, like researchers themselves, have been very supportive. They want to ensure that their funding is used as efficiently as possible and see how Science Exchange can help. Let me give a couple of examples: one is the engagement of expensive equipment that would otherwise be idle. Another is where techniques that take a long time to perfect are being learned for one-off experiments; it is much more efficient to outsource to experts.
An additional string to the Science Exchange bow is in verifying scientific reproducibility. How did that come about?
I noticed that there had been several interesting use cases at Science Exchange in which venture capital companies were using experts to validate experiments independently, prior to making their investment. From there, I began to figure out an initiative to allow academic researchers to validate their research. The result is The Reproducibility Initiative, a partnership with a publisher (Public Library of Science), a data storage company (Figshare) and a literature analytics company (Mendeley) that provides a stamp of reproducibility for research studies, methods and reagents.
The literature is a vast body of knowledge but at the moment we are unsure what parts of it are really true. It turns out that the tools that we thought defined quality – publication in a high-impact journal, numerous citations, even multiple papers showing a similar result – do not identify reliable data. The Reproducibility Initiative is a positive incentive system for validating research.
Where do you think research is headed, what are the big trends?
In the past five years, the two key breakthroughs have been open access and data deposition; in the next, the focus will be on quality and efficiency. Science Exchange is well positioned to contribute to both these things. In five years’ time, researchers will be producing high-quality research that can be independently reproduced, and they will be recognized and rewarded for it.
Richard Gallagher is no stranger to quality, style or credibility. With Science, Nature and The Scientist all under his editorial belt, Richard teamed up with two good friends to form Texere Publishing, a new company with a great deal of know-how. Richard's also no stranger to contention: "You've constantly got to have an eye out for an editorial subject that will really stir the pot. We're aiming to be always relevant, but never predictable. About The Analytical Scientist, he says, Our vision is to capture commitment and success in analytical science in very particular way: by telling stories. Getting it right is an enormous, exciting challenge. Like so many professionals in the analytical sciences, we'll be thinking it, dreaming it and living it every day.
