Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: vanKitti on 07/03/2018 13:06:03
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Hi everyone,
I'm a service designer working on a project trying to tackle funding and publication issues in research (trying to find ways to shift power from funders and publishers to the scientists themselves).
As I'm not a scientist myself, I'm currently trying to gain a deep understanding of your funding process and research cycles, the tools you use and where your pain points are. I'd be incredibly grateful for any insights!
Below are a few steps I've identified in the research process (please correct me if I'm wrong!) and I'm especially curious to know where in the process and what sort of troubles you encounter, if you use open science tools already and if you have ideas for improvements!
- Funding (finding grants, applying for them)
- Discovery (search & discover, develop idea, design study, acquire materials, collect and store data)
- Analysis (analyse data, interpret findings)
- Writing Report
-Publishing (traditional journals, open access..?)
-Outreach
-Assessment
If anyone is interested in the topic please let me know, I'm on the lookout for collaborators, :)
Thank you!
Anna
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It is a laudable goal, and I am interested in seeing you succeed. Unfortunately there are a lot of chicken-and-egg sort of problems involved in tackling such a complex issue.
(For the record, I am an active researcher studying chemistry at a private university in the USA, so my views are biased accordingly, and not necessarily applicable to researchers in other parts of the world or at other types of institutions)
From my perspective, there are two major pain points:
• Research is quite expensive, and basic research (which is what I do) usually does not generate valuable intellectual property directly (even when I discover compounds or processes with potential utility, these are only potential leads, and will not by themselves attract funding from industry until after a lengthy and expensive and academically uninteresting "de-risking" process). This means that my funding comes primarily from major federal granting agencies or charitable foundations--both of which effectively require a potentially transformative research proposal complete with preliminary findings, sworn collaborators, and pre-existing recognition within the field. I have occasionally flirted with the idea of crowdfunding research (using platforms like Kickstarter, but for scientists), and I know a few people who have had success here, but it's hard to raise $500000 from the public when your proposed research sounds like magic or gobbeldygook.
• I am not allowed to personally collect funding or support in any way. Instead, I have to work through the university's Office of Sponsored Research, accepting money and in-kind services/materials only from vetted sources, forking over significant proportions of funding to overhead, and complying with the university's many, many policies regarding disbursement of funds, reporting etc. etc. (I understand why we do this, but it is an enormous headache, and takes up way too much of my time)
• As tenure-track faculty, I will be judged based on my publication and fundraising records (and teaching in a distant 3rd). This means that I need as many articles with as high profiles as possible before my clock runs out. This means that until I have secured tenure I have NO INCENTIVE to publish in a journal I haven't heard of before (putting well-established journals and publishing houses securely above any newfangled competitors.) It also means that until I have tenure, I have to worry more about gaming the system to get my name recognized and money flowing than I do about actually performing good science that will push my field ahead (I know of at least one example of a professor who published a highly controversial paper in a very well-regarded journal, only to retract it shortly after receiving tenure...smh)
• Paywalls hurt everybody except the publisher. Luckily for me, I work at a university that has subscriptions to nearly every journal I would want to access (I have occasionally needed to shell out money for the odd manuscript that is not included in our subscriptions). When possible, I try to publish articles that are open access, but this can be quite costly. The last one cost me nearly $900 (thankfully I had money earmarked for this type of expense, but I only have the budget to publish one or maybe two open access articles per year).
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Isn't this really a "Just Chat" topic?
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Chiral seems to be an honest broker, but from the other end of the spectrum,
1. Very little of what I do or referee ever gets published: most research is about product improvement, which is rewarded by profit and not by giving away trade secrets. Sometimes it results in a patent if there is a possibility that the product might be copied, but open publication without protection is a gift to competitors.
2. Now and again it's worth telling the world something important for the public good. I've published on the development of national measurement standards and international specifications for measurement, but this sort of publication is pulled by the market, not pushed by the researcher.
3. Nearly all published academic research that has not been sponsored and to some extent censored by industry is dross. Journals are stuffed with trivial findings of training projects that have clearly been assembled for the benefit of the students undertaking them.
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Interesting. I would like to work in this direction.