Creating more EA aligned journals or conferences Movement building
Academic publications are considered to be significantly more credible than other types of publications. However, the academic publication system is highly misaligned with key EA values (e.g., efficiency and intellectual novelty/impartiality). We would therefore like to encourage initiatives to start, influence or acquire influential academic journals or conferences to enable EA to have better academic impacts towards our desired outcomes.
Just FYI, here is copy explaining a related idea that I discussed with David Reinstein (who is doing work in this space). Its about how to create a very low effort EA ‘unjournal’. This could provide a way to more easily publish small scale EA research papers and projects:
To create a quick and easy prototype to test you fork the EA forum and use that fork as a platform for the ‘unjournal’ project (maybe called something like ‘The Journal of Social Impact Improvement and Assessment’).
People (ideally many EA) would use the forum like interface to submit papers to this ‘unjournal’.
These papers would look like EA forum posts but with an included OSF link to a PDF version. Any content (e.g., slides/video) could be embedded in the submission.
All submissions would be reviewed by a single admin (you?) for basic quality standards.
Most drafts would be accepted to the unjournal.
Any accepted drafts would be publicly ‘peer reviewed’. They would achieve ‘peer reviewed’ status when >x (3?) people from a predetermined/elected editors/expert board had publicly or anonymously reviewed the paper by commenting publicly on the post. Reviews might also involve ratings the draft on relevant criteria (INT?). Public comment/review/rating would also be possible.
Draft revisions would be optional but could be requested. These would simply be new posts with version X/v X appended to the title
All good comments/posts to the journal would receive upvotes etc so authors, editors and commentators would gain recognition, status and ‘points’ etc from participation. This is sufficient for generating participation in most forums and notably lacking in most academic settings.
Good papers submitted to the journal would be distinguished by being more widely read, engaged with, and praised than others. If viable, they would also win prizes. As an example, there might be a call for papers on solving issue x with a reward pool of grant/unconditional funding of up to x for winning submissions. The top x papers submitted to the unjournal in response to that call would get grant funding for further research.
A change in reward/incentives (from I had a paper accepted/cited to I won a prize), seem to have various benefits
It still works for traditional academic metrics—grant money is arguably even more prized than citations and publications in many settings
It works for non-academics who don’t care about citations or prestigious journal publications
As a metric ‘funds received’ would probably better tracks researchers’ actual impact than their citations and acceptance in a top journal. People won’t pay for more research that they don’t value but they will cite or accept that to a journal for other reasons.
Academics could of course still cite the DOIs and get citations tracked this way.
Reviewers could be paid per review by research commissioners.
Here is a quick example of how it could work for the first run. Open Philanthropy call for research on something they want to know about (e.g., interventions to reduce wild animal suffering). They commit to provide up 100,000 in research funding for good submissions and 10,000 for review support. 10 relevant experts apply and are elected to the expert editorial boards to review submissions. They will receive 300USD per review and are expected to review at least x paper. People submit papers, these are reviewed, OP award follow up prizes to the winning papers. The cycle repeats with different funders and so on.
Creating more EA aligned journals or conferences
Movement building
Academic publications are considered to be significantly more credible than other types of publications. However, the academic publication system is highly misaligned with key EA values (e.g., efficiency and intellectual novelty/impartiality). We would therefore like to encourage initiatives to start, influence or acquire influential academic journals or conferences to enable EA to have better academic impacts towards our desired outcomes.
Just FYI, here is copy explaining a related idea that I discussed with David Reinstein (who is doing work in this space). Its about how to create a very low effort EA ‘unjournal’. This could provide a way to more easily publish small scale EA research papers and projects:
To create a quick and easy prototype to test you fork the EA forum and use that fork as a platform for the ‘unjournal’ project (maybe called something like ‘The Journal of Social Impact Improvement and Assessment’).
People (ideally many EA) would use the forum like interface to submit papers to this ‘unjournal’.
These papers would look like EA forum posts but with an included OSF link to a PDF version. Any content (e.g., slides/video) could be embedded in the submission.
All submissions would be reviewed by a single admin (you?) for basic quality standards.
Most drafts would be accepted to the unjournal.
Any accepted drafts would be publicly ‘peer reviewed’. They would achieve ‘peer reviewed’ status when >x (3?) people from a predetermined/elected editors/expert board had publicly or anonymously reviewed the paper by commenting publicly on the post. Reviews might also involve ratings the draft on relevant criteria (INT?). Public comment/review/rating would also be possible.
Draft revisions would be optional but could be requested. These would simply be new posts with version X/v X appended to the title
All good comments/posts to the journal would receive upvotes etc so authors, editors and commentators would gain recognition, status and ‘points’ etc from participation. This is sufficient for generating participation in most forums and notably lacking in most academic settings.
Good papers submitted to the journal would be distinguished by being more widely read, engaged with, and praised than others. If viable, they would also win prizes. As an example, there might be a call for papers on solving issue x with a reward pool of grant/unconditional funding of up to x for winning submissions. The top x papers submitted to the unjournal in response to that call would get grant funding for further research.
A change in reward/incentives (from I had a paper accepted/cited to I won a prize), seem to have various benefits
It still works for traditional academic metrics—grant money is arguably even more prized than citations and publications in many settings
It works for non-academics who don’t care about citations or prestigious journal publications
As a metric ‘funds received’ would probably better tracks researchers’ actual impact than their citations and acceptance in a top journal. People won’t pay for more research that they don’t value but they will cite or accept that to a journal for other reasons.
Academics could of course still cite the DOIs and get citations tracked this way.
Reviewers could be paid per review by research commissioners.
Here is a quick example of how it could work for the first run. Open Philanthropy call for research on something they want to know about (e.g., interventions to reduce wild animal suffering). They commit to provide up 100,000 in research funding for good submissions and 10,000 for review support. 10 relevant experts apply and are elected to the expert editorial boards to review submissions. They will receive 300USD per review and are expected to review at least x paper. People submit papers, these are reviewed, OP award follow up prizes to the winning papers. The cycle repeats with different funders and so on.
Hi Peter, very awesome idea, I am working on this kind of project, it would be nice to talk with you