Thanks for this! I have had several similar, but much less developed, ideas. This post was therefore quite helpful as it expanded those ideas and suggested tangible projects to progress them. I am also pleased to see that more and more people in the EA community appear to be thinking about innovating research. For me, evidence from research seems so critical to the EA evidence pipeline that we should be particularly concerned with how well research is done.
Of all the ideas you propose, which one or two have the highest expected ROI (considering tractability) in your view? If you had to fund one project (it could be your own) what would that project aim to do?
I’m quite unsure about which ideas has the best ROI, and I think it would depend a lot on who was looking to execute a project which idea would be most suitable. That said, I’m personallymost excited about the potential of working with research policy at different levels—from my current understanding this just seems extremely neglected compared to how important it could be, and if I’d make a guess about which of these ideas I might myself be working on in a few years it would be research policy.
Short term, I’d be most excited to see the projects happen that would provide more information (e.g. identify the most important institutions, understand how policy documents actually translate into specific research being done, understanding the dynamics of exisiting contexts where experts and non-academics discuss research agenda, evaluation of existing R&D hubs, etc) - with this information avaliable I would hope it would be possible to prioritise between different larger projects.
I’m curious, what would you yourself think would be most important and/or have the best ROI?
Thanks for responding. I generally agree! I also struggle to pick out an obvious highest priority choice. Two I liked were:
Identify the most significant institutions for shaping global research policy and investigate how their decisions are made, the size of their budgets and their priority areas. This should include a survey of previous research on science policy development (e.g. by SPRU).
Investigate the implementation of previous research policies to understand how the wording of policy documents translate into specific funding allocation, research project proposals, and research results and publications.
I also like the idea of more reviews to ‘legitimate’ new lines of research—this is something I have often tried to do in my own research.
I think that some sort of community building might be one of the highest ROI activities that is being missed. The possible projects and their impacts are all going to be heavily mediated by the capacity of the community/available human capital. One reason why I like seeing these posts and the ongoing Slack conversations etc!
Thanks for this! I have had several similar, but much less developed, ideas. This post was therefore quite helpful as it expanded those ideas and suggested tangible projects to progress them. I am also pleased to see that more and more people in the EA community appear to be thinking about innovating research. For me, evidence from research seems so critical to the EA evidence pipeline that we should be particularly concerned with how well research is done.
Of all the ideas you propose, which one or two have the highest expected ROI (considering tractability) in your view? If you had to fund one project (it could be your own) what would that project aim to do?
Thanks, great to hear =)
I’m quite unsure about which ideas has the best ROI, and I think it would depend a lot on who was looking to execute a project which idea would be most suitable. That said, I’m personallymost excited about the potential of working with research policy at different levels—from my current understanding this just seems extremely neglected compared to how important it could be, and if I’d make a guess about which of these ideas I might myself be working on in a few years it would be research policy.
Short term, I’d be most excited to see the projects happen that would provide more information (e.g. identify the most important institutions, understand how policy documents actually translate into specific research being done, understanding the dynamics of exisiting contexts where experts and non-academics discuss research agenda, evaluation of existing R&D hubs, etc) - with this information avaliable I would hope it would be possible to prioritise between different larger projects.
I’m curious, what would you yourself think would be most important and/or have the best ROI?
Quick thoughts:
Thanks for responding. I generally agree! I also struggle to pick out an obvious highest priority choice. Two I liked were:
Identify the most significant institutions for shaping global research policy and investigate how their decisions are made, the size of their budgets and their priority areas. This should include a survey of previous research on science policy development (e.g. by SPRU).
Investigate the implementation of previous research policies to understand how the wording of policy documents translate into specific funding allocation, research project proposals, and research results and publications.
I also like the idea of more reviews to ‘legitimate’ new lines of research—this is something I have often tried to do in my own research.
I think that some sort of community building might be one of the highest ROI activities that is being missed. The possible projects and their impacts are all going to be heavily mediated by the capacity of the community/available human capital. One reason why I like seeing these posts and the ongoing Slack conversations etc!