Opening research proposals; thoughts on virtual collaboration

I recently had my first experience with the research proposal process, or something similar. It was an interesting experience, and it suggests some important implications.

The proposal was in response to a call issued by the UK Research Information Network. I’ll start by noting that it wasn’t a traditional research proposal, but rather a tender (or as we’d call it in the States, a bid) to act as contractor to RIN (in this case, to conduct research on the topic of its choosing and write up the results in its name). Unlike a traditional research proposal, we didn’t have to convince the reviewers of the value of the research or the need for research on this topic; rather, we had to describe our plan for conducting the research and disseminating what we learned, then convince the reviewers that we were the best team to give their money to. Nevertheless, much of what I’m about to describe applies equally to more traditional research proposals, as well.

The process went like this:

• RIN posted a call for expressions of interest: a short blurb on what RIN was looking to fund, with a request that interested researchers email RIN to receive more details.
• Folks forwarded the call around to those who might be interested. For example, Cameron Neylon posted it on his blog, ending with the question:
  

  So my question is: Are people interested in pursuing this? And if so, what do you think your hourly rate is?

• I emailed Dr. Neylon to let him know I’d be interested in the project. He, in turn, emailed RIN.
• After the deadline for expressions of interest, RIN emailed everyone who had responded to the call. Attached were the call for tenders (with the full details of what to submit) and a list of everyone who had expressed interest.
• Some researchers on the list contacted each other and formed larger groups. Others dropped out. Our final team consisted of 6 people in 3 countries, from the non-profit, for-profit, and academic sectors. I don’t think I had corresponded directly with any of them before the project (although I was aware of some of them). I probably couldn’t recognize a photo of any of them.
• We collaborated via email, wiki, VoIP, and chat, brainstorming a plan and then writing it up.
• We submitted the tender, then waited for a response. Eventually, we got an invitation to interview. We found a time when one of our team members could go, discussed how to prepare for the interview, and held our breath. Not long after the interview, we were informed that another team had been selected.

Obviously, I was disappointed that our team wasn’t chosen to do the work. (Best wishes to the team that was.) But the experience, as well as the reviewers’ feedback, was very informative.

• It was exciting to cobble together our virtual research group — in different time zones, from different backgrounds — with few, if any, of us who had ever worked together before.
• It was interesting but challenging for the group to collaborate: for all the project management software and virtual research environments, we stuck to a hodgepodge of familiar tools.
• It was fun to think through the issues involved, individually as well as collectively, and try to identify the questions we wanted answered — and then figure out how to answer them.
• Finally, it was an interesting example of cooperation vs. competition: we knew that other teams were preparing their own tenders. They might have ideas that would make our proposal stronger, and vice versa. But if we shared ideas, we’d lose some of our advantage relative to the other team. (In the extreme example, the teams could join together, likely resulting in a stronger proposal but also in a smaller share of the grant for each participant.)

I want to highlight three implications:

1. Joining a team: This was an extraordinarily open project in terms of getting involved. That’s something other researchers should aim to emulate. More broadly, I know there are plenty of people like me who aren’t affiliated with a university but would like to participate in research. They may be, like me, preparing to go back to school and looking to burnish their research credentials. They may be citizen scientists interested in a particular topic, or just volunteers looking for a fun project. We need a better way of connecting these people with projects they can work on. Is there a job board for research assistants and volunteers — a Craigslist for science? Getting more people involved in the conduct of research, whether physically or virtually, could not only benefit the projects involved, but also improve public engagement with — and understanding of — science.
2. Groupware/VREs: The fact that we, a team steeped in Web 2.0 in our own practice (and proposing to conduct a study on researchers’ use of Web 2.0 tools), chose the staid media of email and wiki to communicate ought to say something about the state of project management software and virtual research environments. We didn’t want to take the time to learn a new tool in order to collaborate; we just wanted to collaborate. These tools need to become more ubiquitous and easier to use so that researchers are using them from the earliest stages of a project. Good tools will not only help researchers do their work better: it’ll also make it easier to preserve and share the artifacts of their research, for the benefit of other researchers.
3. Opening research proposals: This seems to be an aspect of research which is relatively secretive. Few funding bodies seem to post the proposals for projects they fund, let alone proposals they rejected. But wouldn’t researchers (and students) benefit from seeing the methods proposed by other researchers? Wouldn’t the full details of a project, not just a summary, improve current awareness and reduce unnecessary duplication? Wouldn’t better access to proposals increase the transparency both of funders (so anyone can see the details of what was funded as well as what was turned down) and of researchers (so anyone can compare the methodology of the published results to the methodology proposed earlier)? There may be some cases where researchers want to keep their methodology secret until they’re done working on it, but those should be the exception rather than the rule. We can start working on the low-hanging fruit now, while thinking about how to deal with the cases where researchers don’t want disclosure: there’s no reason in principle that we shouldn’t campaign for open access to research proposals alongside research data and published results. It can even be an opportunity: imagine a footnote that begins, “Using the methodology proposed by Baker et al., …”.

In the spirit of the latter, our team with Neylon et al. decided to share the tender we submitted. (An email to the project coordinator at RIN confirmed that RIN wasn’t going to post the submitted tenders, but didn’t mind if the bidders did so themselves.) So we’ve posted it at Scribd, for reading online or for download. You can find it here: Tender: Use and relevance of web 2.0 resources for researchers. Maybe someone will find it useful.