Sorry, but academic publications in themselves are less likely to merit impact, though; if researchers want to reach beyond the ivy tower of academia, there are certain steps they can take. Why not consider a campaign? Toby Green discusses the imperative to ensure that researchers are seeking and finding proper audiences if they intend to cause impact. Researchers who do so will be more visible, and they’re more likely to win grants.
UPDATED: The U.S. Senate committee that oversees funding for the National Science Foundation, and with that most of the federal money spent on basic social and behavioral science research, today approved a 2020 budget that increases NSF spending by $242 million compared to the current fiscal year. The bill must still pass the full Senate, and be reconciled with a more generous House version.
Showing impact is a question of timescales as well as metrics. If you invest in research you are likely to see success in high-quality research outputs such as publications, as the UK has demonstrated in the past couple of decades. But it’s harder to demonstrate innovation and it takes longer.
For this fifth article in the series of measuring impact, Louis Coiffait spoke to two leading UK experts who also know other countries; Dr Hamish McAlpine, head of knowledge exchange data and evidence at Research England, and Sean Fielding, director of innovation, impact and business at the University of Exeter, and also the chair of the UK national knowledge exchange association, PraxisAuril.
As details emerged on March 11 about the president’s fiscal year 2020 budget, it became increasingly clear that science funding would once again be targeted for significant spending cuts. But a new target also emerged – federal spending on education.
The two federal agencies that spend the most on making grants to social and behavioral science research in the United States, both have their budgets shaved by an eighth in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal released by the Trump administration earlier this month. But the move is more symbolic than substantive.
The final agreement ending the most recent U.S. government shutdown provides $8.1 billion for the National Science Foundation, a $301 million increase over the amount appropriated in fiscal year 2018.
In this first in a series of articles about impact, Louis Coiffait will provide an overview of the current situation for researchers (including social scientists) in the United Kingdom, in particular looking at the impact and knowledge exchange frameworks.
An article in the journal Psychological Science, “The New Statistics: Why and How” by La Trobe University’s Geoff Cumming, has proved remarkably popular in the years since and is the third-most cited paper published in a Sage journal in 2013. The idea of an autonomous vehicle – i.e., a self-driving car – isn’t particularly new. Leonardo da Vinci had some ideas he […] Social sciences can also inform the design and creation of ethical frameworks and guidelines for AI development and for deployment into systems. Social scientists can contribute expertise: on data quality, equity, and reliability; on how bias manifests in AI algorithms and decision-making processes; on how AI technologies impact marginalized communities and exacerbate existing inequities; and on topics such as fairness, transparency, privacy, and accountability. If schools provide the proper support and resources, they will help educators move from anxiety to empowerment when integrating AI into the classroom. An article in the journal Psychological Science, “The New Statistics: Why and How” by La Trobe University’s Geoff Cumming, has proved remarkably popular in the years since and is the third-most cited paper published in a Sage journal in 2013. By carefully interrogating the system of economic incentives underlying innovations and how technologies are monetized in practice, we can generate a better understanding of the risks, both economic and technological, nurtured by a market’s structure.
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Impact
Paper Opening Science to the New Statistics Proves Its Import a Decade Later
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A Milestone Dataset on the Road to Self-Driving Cars Proves Highly Popular
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Why Social Science? Because It Can Help Contribute to AI That Benefits Society
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Innovation
AI Upskilling Can and Should Empower Business School Faculty
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Paper Opening Science to the New Statistics Proves Its Import a Decade Later
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To Better Forecast AI, We Need to Learn Where Its Money Is Pointing
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