I think it might be good to use this tag for posts written as part of research training programs, or written based on research conducted during such programs. E.g. this post (which I’ve just applied the tag to). This would be similar to one way tags about organisations can be used.

OTOH, this might confuse people if it’s not explicitly flagged in the entry. And explicitly flagging it in the entry requires a phrase like “This tag can be used for …”, which seems slightly worth avoiding since this is also intended as a wiki entry.

Open to thoughts on this.

I’ve added a link to a spreadsheet I made listing EA-aligned research training programs, and another link to a doc expanding on what I mean by the term.

It seems like it would normally be slightly bad practice to add links to one’s own works in the body of a Forum Wiki entry (rather than just tagging the posts), and worse practice when those works aren’t even published as posts (just floating spreadsheets or google docs). So maybe I shouldn’t have done this.

But I think that this is a case where it makes sense to deviate from what I think should be the norm, because:

• Those links, and particularly the spreadsheet, do seem like they’d be useful to many people who find their way to this entry

• I don’t think there are other sources available that would fill a similar role

• I was the person who coined this term for this particular cluster of things, which is part of why there aren’t other sources available

  • But this also raises the hypothesis that the entry as a whole should be replaced with an entry with a somewhat different scope or term

    • And I do think that that’s plausible, and I’m open to suggestions

This tag was partly inspired by Stefan Schubert writing:

It could be good if someone wrote an overview of the growing number of fellowships and scholarships in EA (and maybe also other forms of professional EA work). It could include the kind of info given above, and maybe draw inspiration from Larks’ overviews of the AI Alignment landscape. I don’t think I have seen anything quite like that, but please correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m hoping this tag could be useful for people who are considering running or participating in a research training program, or people who definitely will and want to get some insights into how best to do so.

Examples of such programs which I’m aware of include FHI and CLR’s Summer Research Fellowships, CEA’s former Summer Research Fellowship, GPI’s Early Career Conference Programme (probably), FHI’s Research Scholars Program (probably), the Open Phil AI Fellowship (maybe), and—if it happens—Rethink Priorities’ planned intern program (see here).

I’m unsure what the best scope and name for this tag could be. In particular, should it:

• include only things shorter than ~6 months, or also longer things that are still training-ish (e.g., FHI’s 2 year Research Scholars Program)?

• include scholarships for relatively junior researchers which have no other program elements attached?

• include posts relevant to any research training program, or only those run by EA orgs, or only those related to in EA cause areas?

• expand to include non-research internship/​training programs as well?

• expand to include the fellowships that some EA university groups run?