Motivated by evidence based scientists doing gut-based science policy, and by science policy maker acknowleding the faults of the system when they leave it rather than when they can still do something about it, James Wilsdon of RoRI turned his attention towards meta science in this REvaluation 2024 keynote.

Meta Science, Meta Research, Science of Science, Research of Research are all the same, and not new, but new things are going on. Applying robust methods to understanding, analysing and improving the science system!

He shows that he is not the only one, but more and more RoR is done out of the various discplines and sub-disciplines themselves, in particular, because there is data to do so, and that adds specific domain knowledge to the pool of RoR bottom-up. Top-down, from science funders, are at least in the UK again testing their funding in large-scale experimental settings; and are opening their funding data for the ROR community. Lastly, new institutions contribute to the debate, in Carlifornia funded by the Tech community, trying to "practice meta science". 

Why does this happen? More investment, slow down of disruption and radical change, worries about too much reporting and to little impact, on-going crisis of replication, and rapdily changing landscape of scolar communication (open science, open data), pressure for excellence and AI and research funding. MetaScience is both a contribution to incremental change and a source for radical, systematic change.

Concluding, Wilsdon argues for five priorities to go forward: more and better experimentation for evaluation (e.g. applicants reviewing other applicants, makes it easier to find reviewers, and to speed up the process); investing in infrastructures for doing MetaScience at scale and long-term (e.g. the publish-curate-review-platform MetaROR); Foster cross sector alliances (e.g. MetaScience Alliance); with more global conversations beyond western countries; and demonstrate the worth of MetaScience!

Links:

• RoRI-Research on Research Institute: https://researchonresearch.org/
• Metascience Conference: https://metascience.info/ 
• James' presentation slides

Music: Urbana-Metronica (wooh-yeah mix) (ft. Morusque, Jeris, CSoul, Alex Beroza) by spinningmerkaba http://ccmixter.org/people/jlbrock44; SouljaUnit Remix of DeadRobot Music’s Surfy via https://freesound.org/people/SouljaUnit/sounds/640175/
Photo: Martin Jordan

Thanks to our partners and co-organisers that helped realising the REvaluation Conference 2024: Ministry of Innovation, Mobility and Infrastructure, Ministry of Women, Science and Research, Ministry of Economy, Energy and Tourism, Vienna Science and Technology Fund, COST Action PROFEEDBACK (CA ), Meeting Destination Vienna, FH Campus Vienna, Austrian Science Fund, Austrian Research Promotion Agency, ZSI - Centre for Social Innovation, Fraunhofer ISI, Institut Francilien Recherche, Innovation et Société, Joanneum Research and the whole fteval Community. 

podcast(at)fteval.at - twitter.com/fteval - www.fteval.at