At the root of many problems that are being discussed are coordination problems. People are in prisoners’ dilemmas, and keep defecting. This is the case in the suggestion to buy a scientific journal: if the universities coordinated they could buy the journal, remove fees, improve editorial policies, and they would be in a far better situation. Since they don’t coordinate, they have to pay to access their own research.
Research Coordination Projects
Research that can help us improve
At the root of many problems that are being discussed are coordination problems. People are in prisoners’ dilemmas, and keep defecting. This is the case in the suggestion to buy a scientific journal: if the universities coordinated they could buy the journal, remove fees, improve editorial policies, and they would be in a far better situation. Since they don’t coordinate, they have to pay to access their own research.
Research into this type of coordination problem has revealed two general strategies for overcoming the prisoners’ dilemma type effects: quadratic funding and dominant assurance contracts.
I propose a research project to investigate opportunities to use these techniques, which, if appropriate, would get bankrolled by the future fund.