Built by scientists who kept running into the same wall.

Maybe you’ve been there. You need one measurement on an instrument your lab doesn’t have, or someone who actually knows the statistics, or a second pair of eyes on a method. You know that person exists somewhere, maybe two buildings over, maybe at another university. So you send a cold email, wait, and usually hear nothing back.

We kept thinking there should be a simpler way. A place where researchers can say plainly what they need, see what others need from them, and get to work together. That’s BarterSci.

Our mission is simple: help graduate students, postdocs and early-career researchers find the collaborator, instrument time or expertise their work is missing, across labs, fields and institutions.

• Post a task. Describe what you need, such as a sample run, a methods review, a data analysis or a co-author, and what you can offer in return.
• Get proposals. Researchers with the right skills or equipment respond. You choose who to work with.
• Follow the research feed. Short posts about new papers across fields, each a starting point for a conversation. Tap “Who’s in?” to meet others interested in the same idea.
• Agree on your own terms. Co-authorship, shared data, instrument time or a simple thank-you: what you arrange stays between you. We never take a cut of it.

• Real researchers. Members can verify through ORCID or an institutional email, and the badge is shown across the platform.
• Your conversations are yours. Notification emails never include the text of your messages, only who reached out and a link back.
• Credit where it is due. Collaborations here are between researchers. You decide how work is credited.

We’re a small, independent team, not a big company and not backed by venture capital. BarterSci is run by amelix Solutions LLC in California, and it’s built by people who still do research for a living.

That shapes how we build it. We answer support emails ourselves, we read every piece of feedback, and we’d rather make something researchers actually use than something that just grows fast.

BarterSci is early, and we’re honest about that. We’re running a free pilot for researchers in the United States on the web, iOS and Android, and we’re building it together with the first people who join. If something is missing, or doesn’t fit the way your research works, tell us. It directly shapes what we build next.