This project is very interesting and I’m happy to see more organisations forming around research consultancy.
I am currently doing independent consulting from Brazil through a limited sole-tradership (EIRELI) I incorporated here (I’m also hoping to start some independent research projects, but that’s another story).
Incorporating a company and international business banking in Brazil is pain and while I looked for ways to avoid it, it’s pretty much the only way to export services and reliably avoid double taxation (and total tax is only 11% which kind of makes up for difficulties).
Fees: 20% seems a little steep, but using the consulting model it may make it more reasonable to add the cost onto what the client pays, rather than taking it out of what the consultant receives. It looks like the services IDGORE will provide is better than other platforms though (finding and vetting clients and promoting consultants is valuable), so the fee may be justified.
For reference, Kolabtree also charges 20%, but in the marketplace model I feel that I need to bid what I think my service is worth, and then expect Kolabtree to take 20% from that. Having used Kolabtree to bid on several projects, do one project, and crash another project (which they didn’t help with much), I also think their 20% fee is too much for what their matching/platform provides. The main problem I have is that clients there don’t usually have a research background and aren’t very ‘serious’, and also don’t like to pay much.
Services: The services I’ve been providing have mostly been data-analysis for 3D images and physiology recordings, but I’ve also done some preliminary literature reviews and simulation/modelling.
Sometimes I just provide a summary report with figures/description, other clients want me to provide code they can use later on, and most academic clients want me to contribute to the publication of the work as an author.
Cost: I currently bill about 200 Euro a day to academic institutions in Sweden and Germany that I am working with. I’ve been told this is too low by industry consultants, but if I work it out to a monthly equivalent then it is higher than stipended and salaried (after-tax) postdocs would receive at the institutions I’m working with, and in one case I know it is a lot less than the PI would have to pay to employ a postdoc with overheads. In conversation with PIs, I’ve usually heard that they would expect to pay a research consultant as much as postdoc at their institution receives - I think this would almost always be too low, particularly for short jobs. A useful service IGDORE could provide would be to establish a recommended rate range for specific jobs.
I’ve generally had/am doing quite long-term projects with academic clients (say one to six months full-time equivalent, but max 10 days/month on a project) and am usually acting as a part-time remote postdoc.
I’ve also done a bit of work with two start-up companies, and with these, I billed hourly at a similar rate for one (in retrospect that was way too low, but the guy was pre-investment and it was my first consulting job) and charged a fixed fee to the other that worked out to about 300 Euro a day (this was a bit of risk, my best case estimate looked like it would put my rate around 450/day, but it could easily have taken me longer and dropped below 200).
Happy to talk more about this, and I linked this to a few other people I know doing scientific consulting.
P.S. I just joined this forum and haven’t joined IGDORE yet - I probably should.