The name of this donation campaign is a mouthful, I know. Please bear with me while I break the jargon step by step (I do not use ChatGPT). Next, I will explain how a person ever ends up writing a scientific article, and who pays and earns for that. For the science of it and for more images please scroll down. 

• What does ‘publishing a scientific article’ actually mean? 
  You have possibly being writing down a scientific article (also known as paper) when you have had an idea about a specific topic, developed that idea out thoroughly, and written a document explaining your reasoning from start to finish. However, some other conditions apply. Your starting point A must be existing knowledge about something. Your end point Z must say something new about that thing. The reasoning you carry out between A and Z must follow the best standards of the field you are writing about. Typically this also means carrying out your thinking in the expected order.
  
  Writing is not yet publishing. First, someone must check that all is order. So, you submit your document (also known as manuscript or preprint) to a journal. The journal is a periodical dedicated to your topic (kind of magazine). The journal receives your document and forwards it to a few experts in the field. These experts read your work and then recommend improvements (more work for you), rejection (try another journal) or publication (there will be readers). This going of things is called peer-reviewing. I will explain the finances of this process later on.
  
  So, what does an article look like? That depends on the field. First of all, do not confuse it with an article in a magazine or newspaper. A scientific article can range from a few pages to a few tens of pages long. It can contain tables, graphs, pictures and anything that supports its conclusions. Of course, people outside the field are likely to find it hard to understand.
  
  Lately I have been busy writing a scientific article. I am not out of my depth there. This is a list of my past publications
   
• What does ‘being invited to write an article’ actually mean?
  Normally you look at your own work and pick a journal that finds it relevant (there are thousands of them!). Alternatively, the opposite can happen: the journal recognises you have something to say and invites you to write something about it. That's what is happening to me now. Receiving an invite is a confirmation that you are on something worth sharing and. of course, is very flattering. Well… provided the invitation comes from a journal that actually exists and has a proven reputation (unfortunately, this is not the case all the time).
  
  Luckily, all signs of trustworthiness are green in my case. The journal has been around for years and the publisher is the well-known Elsevier: the journal is called Computational Particle Mechanics. Also, I have been invited to publish in this journal because I had already presented my ideas at a conference last summer. The journal editors were there and listened to my presentation. Obviously, the journal covers the topics discussed at the conference. 
  
  These are the best guarantees that this donation is about work that makes sense for more readers than just me and my cat. Of course, the topic is specialised but a publication like this is the best way to make the work done available for many years to come. And the article will be downloadable free of charge for anyone!
   
• What does ‘5 years of unpaid research’ actually mean?
  Long story short: all along I have put my money where my mouth is.
  
  I discovered the ‘stuff of the article’ step by step without a specific goal in mind. So there has been no point in time at which a plan was ready. The journal’s invitation is a wonderful confirmation that independent research can produce valid, original results.
  
  Let me outline with broad lines how research is funded normally. Research sounds like a noble word but is a human activity that consumes time and resources. Money is needed. If you work at a university, research is paid with grants supported by taxpayers or by interested stakeholders. If you work in a company, research can be paid by clients who ask questions or can be an investment to keep the company competitive.
  
  In the Netherlands (at least) you can apply for government grants only if you work at a university, whereas I am a freelancer. That avenue is virtually closed. Pitching my ideas at a company, assuming they see a reason for financial support, could compromise the independence and accessibility of my work. I would have not wanted to lose that. Let alone that applying and pitching draws a lot of time from a freelancer.
  
  So I have paid this research with my own funds. What is the story of these 5 years? 
  
  In 2021, after my tenure at Delft University of Technology finished, I still had access to the university computers for six months. I suggested to my ex-employer that we use that time to calculate a large set of results and upload them online. Anyone in the world without our fast computers could download and study those results. After five years, those datasets are still available online and are among the top downloads produced in Delft. In 2024, the jury of the Dutch Data Prize (and not friends and family) nominated those datasets as finalists. We did not win the prize, but we were very pleased to be selected from 50 candidates.
  
  In 2022, I flew to a conference in Italy and presented the first descriptions of the 2021 data, in collaboration with a guru in the field. In 2024, I took the train to Germany to attend the same conference and listen to the other experts. In 2025, I flew to Spain for another conference and presented new results, those for which I have received an invitation to submit to a journal. This year I also presented the story of the datasets at a national conference in the Netherlands.
  
  These activities costed travel, accommodation, meals, and registration fees (and did not continue into holidays). Above all, they took months of time on task to plan the research, perform the calculations, make sense of the results, write the presentation proposal, write the conference research report, and compose the presentation. In almost all cases, after the events I uploaded presentations and texts to the public repository Zenodo where those works have been viewed and downloaded free of charge.
  
  This all to follow a mission point of Watermotion: advance understanding.
   
• What does ‘help to the finish line’ actually mean?
  [to be continued]

WHAT'S THE AIM? 

The vision of what the donations are for is clear.

1. A piece of original research will be peer-reviewed, published and downloadable free of charge for anyone in a reputable scientific journal. It is a great honour and a great validation of the past work that I have invited to publish there
2. The name of you donors will be gratefully mentioned in the article as funding sources, unless you chose to donate anonymously
3. The work will not be buried in a drawer. Should the editors eventually reject the article, the preprint will be uploaded in an open-access repository for anyone to use it. (The link to share the draft is not active yet but is already reserved)
4. If I do not manage to get the deadline to submit to this journal, I will submit it to another journal of equal standing

ABOUT THE DONATION

1. What kind of campaign is this? 
   Book publishing is the closest category available in Steunactie. In fact it goes about publishing a single article in a respectable peer-reviewed journal (Computational Particle Mechanics). The article will be open-access: anyone will be able to legally download the published article free of charge (clearly this is not the case everywhere). I will not earn anything after the publication.
2. Who gets the money? 
   I am a self-employed (freelancer, zzp'er). This fundraiser is for Watermotion | Waterbeweging, the company under which I carry my work, including presenting studies and publishing articles. The company description is provided in this page.
   You are donating to Watermotion, not to me as a person. Watermotion pays for the processing charges, your donations count as revenue, and Watermotion will also pay income tax on them
3. Why that much money?
   The target amount of €6900 corresponds to the legal minimum for the gross hourly salary in the Netherlands times 3 months of 4 weeks of 5 working days of 8 hours each. 
   This calculation was just to set a reasonable baseline. The hourly rate is the lowest allowed in the Netherlands and 40-hour work week underestimates the workload. The article must be submitted before 31 March 2026 and the following exchanges with the peer-reviewers will take more weeks.
   Watermotion will also pay income tax on the donation.
   Any donation from €5 upwards is permitted.
4. What do I use this money for?
   For so-called operational expenditures only, that is, to buy time and not stuff. 
   Publishing the article is free of charge because the publisher has waived the publication fees for the invited articles, like mine. [Explain business model]
   There is a deadline and I need time to write down the draft, set up calculations, check results, respond in the peer-review process and so forth. I will use the donations to ease the pressure of all preoccupations about finding new paid assignments
5. What can you ask after donating?
   Donations are gifts without any return considerations (donaties zonder tegenprestatie).
   1. In particular, they entail no influence on the thinking, writing and reviewing process. This is a strict requirement of integrity for scientific publications which I want to uphold.
   2. I am also obliged (and very pleased) to acknowledge in the article all funding support received. All named donors will be mentioned gratefully in print. Please donate anonymously if you don't want that. If you change your mind about being thanked publicly let me know using the contact button provided by Steunactie.
   3. Watermotion is not a charitable organisation (ANBI) so your donation cannot be deducted from your taxes, alas. But Watermotion will pay taxes on the donation, so a part of it will return to the collective good!

ABOUT THE IMAGES AND THE CONTENT

What is that about? More will be written here. This for those interested in which science it is, in what that is for and in what they see from videos and images.