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Update: End of Prolific fee-waiver programme for COVID-19 related studies

Bri Cho
|March 18, 2020

Update – 27/04/2020

After 5 weeks of processing applications, waiving fees for 54 eligible studies (so far!), and awarding £20,000 in grants (so far!), we're winding down our COVID-19 fee waiver programme.

This means that all already approved studies will still receive their waiver, but we won’t be accepting any new applications as of today.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the research stops! £20,000 was just the start. There are many more fee-waived studies that will be published soon.

In addition to this, 100s of other COVID-19 related studies have already been run on our platform, and we’re ready to host hundreds more if need be, as we all tackle some of the toughest questions of our generation.

Do you have any feedback for us, is thereanything we could have done better? Let us know via Twitter or Linkedin. We’re all ears & would love to know how we can improve our product and service for you.

We want to express our immense gratitude to every researcher and participant on our platform who has, and continues to, play a role in responding to the unprecedented challenges we’re all facing.

Original Post – 18/03/2020

We are facing an unprecedented crisis worldwide, and the team here at Prolific would like to do our part to help.

Starting today, we are offering 0% service fees on all eligible COVID-19 related studies published on Prolific.

We are actively looking into other ways of helping, but we feel that waiving service fees where appropriate is the least we can do.

Here's what will happen:

  1. Please get in touch with info@prolific.co and mention COVID-19 in the subject.
  2. In your email/ query, please include some details about your proposed COVID-19 research.
  3. Our team will then get back to you as soon as possible regarding eligibility (read more below about eligibility). We are hoping to get back within 1-2 business days.
  4. Once your eligibility is confirmed, we will make the service fee for your researcher account 0%.
  5. You are good to go to launch waived-fees studies.

Who's eligible?

  • Anyone doing research that helps contribute to slowing the spread/ growth of COVID-19.
  • This could be studies for figuring out best ways to encourage better, more frequent handwashing, or a study looking at how to ensure people follow quarantine and/or self-isolation directives.

What details should I include about my COVID-19 related study?

  • If you already have a short and concise research proposal, do share that with us
  • Alternatively, please give us as much detail as possible regarding the following (please keep your answers to the questions below as succinct and short as possible):
  • What is the research question or hypothesis you want to test?
  • How does this research contribute to slowing the spread/growth of COVID-19?
  • How do you plan on sharing your study results in order to maximise impact?
  • What survey/experimental tool are you planning to use?
  • What is your desired sample size?
  • What are your demographic criteria for the sample?
  • How long is the study you hope to run (in minutes)?
  • Have you preregistered your research protocol? If not, why? If yes, please send us the preregistration link

How long will this offer last?

  • As a start, we are limiting this offer to a 1-month validity
  • That is, from getting the 0% fee approved, you will have 1 month to publish your study and gather the necessary data before we revert the service fee back to normal
  • Should changing circumstance necessitate further studies beyond the 1-month period, we are happy to extend the offer on a case by case basis

We hope some of you find this offer helpful! Remember to get in touch with info@prolific.co to benefit from this offer.

Please let us know if there is anything else that we can help with.

Prolific Team

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