| Karel Charvát
Wikipedia defines a Science Shop as s a facility, often attached to a specific department of a university or an NGO, that provides independent participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society. It's a demand-driven and bottom-up approach to research. In this classical definition, it is expected, that Science Shops are managed and operated by both permanent staff members and students who screen questions provided by members of civil society. Science Shop staff use these questions to provide challenging problems to both research students and university faculty members in the hope of finding solutions to the question. Students who participate in Science Shop projects often can acquire credits toward their degree. Also, many students do their postgraduate work on problems referred to by Science Shops.
A similar approach to Science Shop is for example defined by Living Knowledge, The International Science Shops Network: " Science Shops are not “shops” in the traditional sense of the word. They are small entities that carry out scientific research in a wide range of disciplines – usually free of charge and – on behalf of citizens and local civil society. The fact that Science Shops respond to civil society’s needs for expertise and knowledge is a key element that distinguishes them from other knowledge transfer mechanisms. A Science Shop provides independent, participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society.
In our approach, we are living this classical approach and for us, Science Shop is virtual space, where researchers and communities can share their needs and ideas. Science shop will help make contact between researchers and users; it is the space for demand and supply - new projects, thesis, research, processing ideas, etc. Science shop is a kind of forum which allows signed-in users to create new posts. In our Science Shop you have two possibilities:
- I have an idea - I'm looking for support for the RESEARCH or the whole team
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I'm a Researcher - I need space to realize my ideas or offer my knowledge
It could help to students find ideas for their thesis and possibilities to provide real practical experiments and communities to look for reserchers, who can help them to solve their problems.