First Awards Made as SciSIP Moves Forward |
In 2005, Presidential Science Adviser John Marburger spoke at both the COSSA Annual Meeting and the AAAS Public Policy Forum about the need to examine science and innovation policy. He called for a “social science of science policy.”
The National Science Foundation’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate took up Marburger’s challenge and initiated a program in the “Science of Science and Innovation Policy” (SciSIP). At the 2006 COSSA Annual Meeting, SBE Assistant Director David Lightfoot presented SBE’s plans for the initiative (see Update, November 6, 2006).
At the recent SBE Advisory Committee meeting on November 8, Kaye Husbands Fealing, who leads the SciSIP initiative, discussed the program so far. She noted that the goals of the initiative are the “development of an evidence-based platform for science policy.” You accomplish this, Fealing said, by: gaining understanding by developing usable knowledge and theories; improving and expanding science metrics, datasets, and analytical models and tools; and by cultivating a community of practice that focuses on SciSIP across the academy, the public sector and industry. That “community of practice” is, Fealing related, “interdisciplinary, international, innovative, and inclusive.”
The SciSIP project delineated 10 “grand challenges," including:
- A full systems approach to mapping science, technology and innovation;
- Portfolio models of investment in science and technology;
- Behavioral and dynamic models of the relationship between scientific discovery and policy decisions;
- Maps and cyber tools linking the evolving taxonomy of science and engineering to policy decision making;
- Full accounting of intangible assets and international workforce flows, and their contributions to science and technology outcomes;
- Real-time evaluative and decision-making tools for assessing public sector investment in fundamental science and technology on economic growth and social well-being;
- Measures of spillover effects between scientific discovery and technological innovation, particularly among universities, firms, and government labs;
- Evaluative measures of disciplinary cultures on transformative work;
- Computational models of creativity; and
- Evaluative approaches to measuring diversity and its impact on science and technology developments.
SBE has now made the awards from the first major SciSIP solicitation. From 60 proposals, 19 projects were funded. According to Fealing, they fell into five categories: 1) human capital development and the collaborative enterprise related to science, technology, and innovation outcomes; 2) returns to international knowledge flows; 3) creativity and innovation; 4) knowledge production systems; and 5) science policy implications.
Under the heading of lessons learned from the solicitation, Fealing noted that proposals from a variety of fields and varied methodologies performed well, as did multidisciplinary studies if all of the necessary areas of expertise were well represented by engaged researchers. There was not much response for small grants to conduct pilot studies. Infrastructure development took a back seat to research studies.
The next solicitation scheduled for early 2008 will emphasize data development and community building.
Note: MPSA is a governing member of COSSA, which monitors all federal agencies that provide support for social and behavioral research and advocates for a non-politicized research agenda. This article appeared in the November 19, 2007, issue of COSSA Washington UPDATE. For more information about COSSA, visit their website at http://www.cossa.org/.