Each year, billions of pounds of public funding is invested in the research and innovation system. The figure is much higher once funding from non-profits and the private sector is included.
Until recently, relatively little funding and attention has been paid towards optimising how this money is spent, even when we know a thriving research and development system is vital to:
- driving policy change
- supporting better career opportunities
- boosting economic growth
- enabling novel fundamental research that prepares us for future challenges
Science is a complex social endeavour and so the question of how to improve it is necessarily complex too. It deserves to be the object of deep and rigorous study. This is why we need a unit dedicated to metascience, the science of science.
Investing in research, development and innovation is vital to UK and international economic growth and prosperity. However, it is not just the quantity of that investment that matters, but also the quality. How research is funded and practised is critical to accelerating scientific breakthroughs and innovations, nurturing talent and shaping research culture.
‘Metascience’ is a growing movement among academics, governments, private and philanthropic funders and research-performing institutions. They are all increasingly concerned with how to get the most out of the money society spends on research and development.
Within the metascience community there are two characteristic groups:
Researchers using social scientific methods
Researchers using rigorous social scientific methods, for example, experiments and qualitative or quantitative data analysis, to study the practice of science itself.
This includes expertise from a range of disciplinary backgrounds from the full breadth of the research and development system, including:
- economics
- sociology
- cognitive science
- data science
- innovation studies
- business and management sciences
- science of science
- scientometrics and information sciences
- history of science
- science and technology studies
- anthropology
This also includes major contributors from researchers in other areas, for example, engineering and mathematics.
Community of practice
A community of practice united by an interest in designing, implementing, and evaluating innovative modes of science funding and delivery. This includes scientific researchers, and staff within research funders, research-performing institutions, consultancies and private enterprises.
The UK Metascience Unit’s thesis is that these two groups acting together and in collaboration can improve our scientific ecosystem by understanding what works in research funding, policy and practice.
Through collaboration, academic enquiry can generate and evaluate hypotheses to be put into practice by research funders and science practitioners. In turn, this can fuel new lines of academic enquiry. This feedback loop leads ultimately to a scientific ecosystem that improves itself over time.
