Building a Distributed Virtual Laboratory Adjacent to Academia

A number of contemporary forces have conspired to drive highly-competent academics away from the academy. The vagaries of departmental hiring, institutional conservatism, and growth in the number of researchers versus available positions have displaced talent and innovation. Enter the alt-academic institution: small-scale institutions engaged in academic research in niche areas that are not viable at conventional institutions. I will introduce the reader to a specialized type of alt-academic institution by discussing their economics, organizational structure, and approach to collaboration/mentorship. Additionally, innovations such as infrastructural innovation, open access pipelines with version control, heterarchical organization, and a flexible contribution philosophy have made such institutions possible. The main subjects for this point of view article will be the OpenWorm Foundation (http://openworm.org/) and the Orthogonal Research and Education Laboratory (https://orthogonal-research.weebly.com/). Readers are also provided with an account of institutional challenges, from article/book access to encouraging collaborative participation. As recent financial crises and pandemics have made clear, we need robust alternative institutions to overcome challenges to the pure research enterprise. Distributed virtual alt-academic institutions can also serve to increase diversity and overall participation in the research enterprise. This has positive consequences for science literacy and discovery more generally.