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AFIRE - RoRI's Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation

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Tom Stafford, AFIRE programme lead

18 December 2024

t.stafford@sheffield.ac.uk

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Notes

Introduce yourself in the chat

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The talk (only) will be recorded

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Afterwards, discussion under the Chatham House Rule: "anyone who comes to a meeting is free to use information from the discussion, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House_Rule

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18 Core Partners

10 codesigned projects

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AFIRE

  1. Awareness
  2. Motivation
  3. Capacity
  4. Scale and reach
  5. The culture

These slides:

bit.ly/tomstafford

https://researchonresearch.org/project/a-f-i-r-e/

https://researchonresearch.org/project/a-f-i-r-e/

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What is the IGL Research Network?

Supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the IGL Research Network is a community of researchers committed to conducting experimental research in the fields of science, innovation, and productivity.

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The aims of the IGL Research Network are to:

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Lower barriers to high-impact experimental research

Enabling more researchers to conduct impactful studies in these fields

Foster new partnerships and connections between researchers and policymakers

Inform better policy decisions and business practices

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Seed Grants

Who we fund

  • Open to researchers at any university
  • 8 grants; 2 reserved for PhD students.
  • Priority for studies that generate insights applicable to the U.S. context or other OECD countries
  • Must be members of the IGL Research Network.
  • Must be submitted by a Principal Investigator (PI) affiliated with an academic institution.

Examples of activities we’re looking to fund

  • Activities Leading to RCTs
  • Pilot Studies
  • Feasibility Assessments
  • Intervention Design
  • Data Collection Methods Development
  • Preliminary Data Analysis

Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, IGL Seed Grants support researchers in piloting innovative experimental ideas and activities that yield the potential to carry out Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) that generate high-quality evidence for innovation, science, and productivity.

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Funding Range: Awards ranging up to $8,000 USD.

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Timeline: Call open between November 15 - January 15 2025

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https://www.innovationgrowthlab.org/seed-grants

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IGL Annual Research Prizes

Recognising and celebrating outstanding experimental research in science, innovation and productivity..

  • Nomination Period: December 2024 - 31 January 2025, 3 pm CET
  • Number of Awards: 3 studies per year, each awarded $2,000
  • Three Prize Categories:
    • Best Experimental Paper
    • Best Paper with Potential for Policy Impact
    • Best Early-Career Experimental Research Paper

More information can be found on the IGL website.

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Handbook on Experimentation in Science Commercialisation

IGL has been developing a handbook analysing key issues in university-industry collaboration and proposing experimental ideas to address and evaluate the impact of proposed solutions to these challenges

Sign up for launch event on January 23, 15h CET and to receive the handbook here

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Forum

Support

Experiments!

https://researchonresearch.org/project/a-f-i-r-e/

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Register

AFIRE

https://researchonresearch.org/afire-funders-forum/

2024-25 Funder Forum series

Villum Experiment – a grant scheme with double-blind evaluation

23 October 2024 00:00 PDT / 08:00 BST / 09:00 CEST

Anders Smith, Villum Foundation

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Predicting Progress: A Pilot of Expected Utility Forecasting in Science Funding

20 November 2024 07:00 PST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET

Alice Wu, Federation of American Scientists & Jordan Dworkin, Open Philanthropy

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Enhancing EDI in application processes in the CES Transformation Fund, including evaluation of an anonymisation-deanonymisation review process

18 December 2024 07:00 PST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET

Rachel Kendal, Principal Investigator CES Transformation Fund

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Register

Partial Randomisation at The British Academy

19 February 2025 00:00 PDT / 08:00 BST / 09:00 CEST

Ken Emond, The British Academy & Adrian Barnett

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Do Grant Proposal Texts Matter for Funding Decisions? A Field Experiment at NWO

19 March 2025 07:00 PST / 15:00 GMT / 16:00 CET

Müge Şimşek, University of Amsterdam

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An experiment with Distributed Peer Review

23 April 2025 00:00 PDT / 08:00 BST / 09:00 CEST

Hanna Denecke, The Volkswagen Foundation

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Register for updates. Speaker suggestions welcome!

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AFIRE

https://researchonresearch.org/afire-funders-forum/

2024-25 Funder Forum series

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Experiment: Core Outcome Sets for Partial Randomisation

Sprint #1 : AI in reviewer selection

Nov

Dec

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

2024

2025

Sprint #2 : Designing RCTs

Experiment: Distributed Peer Review @ VolkswagenStiftung

Metascience2025

AFIRE Funders’ Forum (monthly)

AFIRE phase 2 experiments announced!

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AFIRE Experiments - phase 2

AFIRE exists to support funder use and generation of higher quality evidence, across all topics. Topics where funders can take advantage of active experiments, recent experience and strong interest from other funders interested in running new experiments are below. For more ideas, see The Research Funders Handbook!

Distributed Peer Review

applicants for a funding scheme become peer review college for that scheme

Partial Randomisation

reducing deliberation time and bias in the grey zone

Can AI help find reviewers?

Testing if language models can help match proposals to peer reviewers

Anonymisation

How and where to use anonymisation in proposal evaluation

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AFIRE - RoRI's Accelerator For Innovation & Research Funding Experimentation

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Tom Stafford, AFIRE programme lead

18 December 2024

t.stafford@sheffield.ac.uk

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