As academics, we need a visibility online. But creating and managing a personal website is expensive and/or time consuming. Our survey shows that most professors cannot afford the price/time to create their website. Others spent up to two weeks creating their first website, and then 1 day/year maintaining it.
It's a surprising result of our survey: managing lab equipment is costly and poorly efficient. Most labs rely on paper-based or calendar tools that require an administrator. The average time spent is 7 minutes per reseacher per week.
The average spending for new equipment is $2.5k/yr/reseacher. But lab equipment are used only 30% of the time... This figure could be increased by sharing equipment with other departments or universities. But organizing such a cooperation in a fair way would be a mess...
Create efficient academic webpages:
Manage lab equipment in few clicks:
We are a group of researchers in applied physics. Few years ago, we met at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology of Harvard University. While some of us started their own research groups in various countries, we realized how difficult it was to maintain a scientific contact with each other. Plus we realized how much time and money was wasted in our respective departments, either creating and maintaining websites or managing equipement. That is the reason why we developed this website and decided to open it to public access.