Document,Informaiton & Knowledge ›› 2020, Vol. 0 ›› Issue (3): 71-82.doi: 10.13366/j.dik.2020.03.071

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Investigation on the Feature Description, Thematic Analysis and Attribute Comparison of International Scientific Crowdfunding Projects: Evidence from the Experiment.com

  

  • Online:2020-05-10 Published:2020-05-20

Abstract: [Purpose/Significance]In order to deeply understand the projects in scientific crowdfunding platforms, we studies the basic characteristics, research topics and attributes of different types of scientific crowdfunding projects.[Design/Methodology]Firstly,we reviewed the origin,value and operational mode of scientific crowdfunding.Subsequently, we crawled all the scientific crowdfunding projects’ information on the Experiment.com, and described the initiators, endorsers, project records, disciplines,funding situations and other information of the scientific research projects. Based on the LDA model, topics of the scientific crowdfunding projects were further refined. Then, we compared the attributes’ differences in scientific research crowdfunding projects of different fund-raising status and different topics.[Findings/Conclusion]Results show that the topics of scientific crowdfunding mainly concentrate in biology and ecology. And there are significant differences in the numbers of project endorsers, information records, and discussions under different fund-raising status. The number of discussions is very different among different topics of scientific crowdfunding projects. Whether or not providing video and participating in grant challenges seriously vary in different funding status and topics.[Originality/Value]This paper makes an in-depth analysis on the comparison of project themes and attributes in scientific research crowdfunding platforms, which could provide some reference for optimizing information review mechanism, social mechanism and information display mechanism of scientific research crowdfunding platforms. 

Keywords: Scientific crowdfunding, LDA model, Feature description, Thematic analysis, Attribute comparison, Experiment.com