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Research Collaboration Protocol Platform
A platform for formalizing multi-party research collaborations with smart-contract-like agreements covering IP ownership, authorship attribution, publication timelines, and data handling rules — specifically designed for collaborations involving AI companies or cross-institutional teams.
Why this matters
You are entering a research collaboration with colleagues at different institutions, one of whom works at an AI company. You discuss who will be credited as authors and how IP will be handled, but these conversations are informal and undocumented. Months later, when results are ready to publish, the AI company attempts to control the narrative, remove authors based on affiliation, and claim primary credit. You have no formal, signed agreement to fall back on. You need a platform that makes it easy to create enforceable collaboration frameworks before the work begins, so credit disputes never arise.
- · Built for Research teams, academic labs, and AI company research divisions that collaborate on intellectual projects and need formalized, enforceable frameworks for credit and IP allocation..
- · Most likely monetization: SaaS subscription with per-collaboration pricing for formal agreements; marketplace for legal templates.
The Pain · Narrative
You are entering a research collaboration with colleagues at different institutions, one of whom works at an AI company. You discuss who will be credited as authors and how IP will be handled, but these conversations are informal and undocumented. Months later, when results are ready to publish, the AI company attempts to control the narrative, remove authors based on affiliation, and claim primary credit. You have no formal, signed agreement to fall back on. You need a platform that makes it easy to create enforceable collaboration frameworks before the work begins, so credit disputes never arise.
Score Breakdown
Market Signal
Go-to-Market
Principal investigators and lab managers at research universities who regularly collaborate with industry partners, especially AI labs
~20K active PIs globally who manage cross-institutional collaborations involving industry partners
Direct outreach to university technology transfer offices and academic conference presence
$99/month per lab; $999/month for institutional licenses
5 university labs actively using the platform for live collaborations within 90 days
MVP Scope · 1–2 weeks
- Design a collaboration agreement template library covering common research collaboration scenarios including AI-company involvement
- Build a simple web form for creating, customizing, and digitally signing collaboration agreements
- Implement a dashboard showing active collaborations, agreement status, and contributor roles
- Create a contribution log feature where collaborators can record their inputs with timestamps
- Set up a landing page targeting academic researchers with a free template download as lead magnet
- Add role-based authorship allocation tracking that maps contributions to proposed author lists
- Implement a dispute flagging workflow that notifies all parties when agreement terms are challenged
- Build integration with Overleaf for collaborative LaTeX document attribution
- Create an export feature generating a complete collaboration record (agreements, contributions, timestamps) as a legal PDF
- Pilot with 2 university labs and gather feedback on template comprehensiveness
Differentiation
Why This Might Fail
Self-rebuttal — the most important trust signal
- 1Academic research culture heavily relies on informal trust and personal relationships, and researchers may view formal agreements as insulting or unnecessary until a dispute actually occurs.
- 2University technology transfer offices and legal departments may already have their own collaboration agreement processes, making a standalone platform redundant.
- 3The market of collaborations specifically involving AI companies is currently small enough that adoption may not reach sustainable scale.
Evidence Summary
How AI synthesized this insight — no verbatim quotes
Several commenters noted that collaboration terms should be formally negotiated beforehand to prevent the type of disputes described in the discussion. One participant emphasized that denying authorship based on affiliation is unacceptable in academia, while another pointed out the conflicts of interest when researchers work at AI companies. The specific incident involving alleged pressure on publication narrative and authorship illustrates the real need for formalized collaboration frameworks in AI-era research.
Action Plan
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Recommended Next Step
Validate
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Landing Page Copy Kit
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Headline
Research Collaboration Protocol Platform
Sub-headline
A platform for formalizing multi-party research collaborations with smart-contract-like agreements covering IP ownership, authorship attribution, publication timelines, and data handling rules — specifically designed for collaborations involving AI companies or cross-institutional teams.
Who It's For
For Research teams, academic labs, and AI company research divisions that collaborate on intellectual projects and need formalized, enforceable frameworks for credit and IP allocation.
Feature List
✓ Template-based collaboration agreement builder with AI-specific clauses (training data rights, model access, publication control) ✓ Role-based contribution tracking linked to cryptographic timestamps ✓ Dispute resolution workflow with neutral third-party arbitration options ✓ Version-controlled agreement evolution as collaborations develop ✓ Integration with reference managers and preprint servers for seamless attribution
Where to Validate
Share your landing page in r/HN · front_page — that's exactly where these pain points were discovered.
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