2020 Metascience Funders Forum

In July 2020, the Center for Open Science hosted a virtual forum for funders of meta interested in metascience — the science of science: investigating how the research process works and how to improve research practices to accelerate discovery.

Funders are encouraged to review and adopt the practices overviewed at cos.io/top-funders as part of the solution to issues discussed during the Funder Forum.

The forum focused on four themes: open scholarship, replication, changing incentives, and growing the field. Leading researchers shared an overview of each theme and lead an interactive discussion of gaps in the current evidence, while funders shared exemplars of solutions they had implemented. Each thematic session closed with breakout discussions about potential investments to advance research and interventions to implement and test.

Forum Goals

• Identify urgent, unanswered questions in how research is conducted.
• Examine how funders can enhance their policies and practices to promote transparent, reproducible research.
• Enable funders and researchers to share experiences and good practices. 
• Discover incentives for supporting good practices among grantees.

Speakers

Funders

• Stuart Buck, Vice President of Research, Arnold Ventures
• Salvatore La Rosa, Vice President for Research & Development, Children’s Tumor Foundation
• Dawid Potgieter, Director of Programs in Discovery Science, Templeton World Charity Foundation
• Katherine Taylor, National Center for Special Education Research

Scientists

• Fiona Fidler
• Katie Corker
• Brian Nosek
• Simine Vazire

Program

Each day consisted of short presentations by a scientist, a funder that engaged on the topic of the day, facilitated breakout discussions, and a roundtable conversation. Please see the complete program guide here.