EAGER: Research on the Broader Impacts of Basic Science: Gauging the State of the Art

国会和美国国家科学基金会（National science Foundation）等科学资助机构正在寻找更好地评估基础科学研究中公共投资在现实世界中的影响的方法。这些担忧现在被称为科学的“更广泛影响”。该项目将批判性地评估描述科学更广泛影响的方法，并制定一个议程，以促进对科学进步如何以及在多大程度上影响社会福祉的理解。通过为更广泛的影响评估提供统一的概念基础，并赞助创建一个由更广泛的影响研究人员和用户群体组成的持续社区，该项目有可能改变我们对如何最好地评估科学研究价值的思考。该项目将首先由一组代表广泛相关学科的研究人员组成，他们将共同调查和组织有关更广泛影响主题的现有学术文献。这个跨学科团队将批判性地评估评估科学更广泛影响的不同方法，其目标是对目前存在的不同方法的各种优缺点进行总体描述。然后，该小组将编写一份综合这些方法的报告，以确定该领域目前的最佳做法。为了吸收更广泛的意见，研究小组将与在更广泛的影响评估领域工作的主要学者召开为期两天的研讨会，就研究报告的分析提出批评和进步，以进一步扩展和改进这一分析，并相互分享他们不同的假设和观点。其次，研讨会将由美国国家科学基金会、国家卫生研究院、国家海洋和大气管理局等机构的代表以及欧洲、南美和亚洲科学机构的代表对这些观点进行审查。这将有助于建立一个由更广泛的影响研究人员和感兴趣的团体组成的社区。

Congress and science funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation are searching for ways to better assess the real world effects of public investments in basic scientific research. These concerns are now known as the "broader impacts" of science. This project will critically evaluate approaches to characterizing the broader impacts of science and develop an agenda for advancing understanding of how and how much impact scientific progress has on societal well-being. By generating a unified conceptual grounding for broader impacts evaluation and sponsoring the creation of an ongoing community of broader impacts researchers and user groups this project has the potential to transform our thinking about how to best assess the value of scientific research.This project will begin by engaging a team of researchers, representing a broad range of relevant disciplines, who will work together to survey and organize the existing scholarly literature on the topic of broader impacts. This interdisciplinary team will critically assess the different approaches to evaluating the broader impacts of science, with the goal of developing a general account of the various strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches existing today. The team will then prepare a report synthesizing these approaches in order to identify the current best practices within the field. To engage even broader input, the research team will convene a two-day workshop with leading academics working in the area of broader impact assessment to offer criticisms and advancements on the analysis of the research report, toward the goals of further extending and improving this analysis as well as sharing their differing assumptions and perspectives with one another. Second, the workshop will have these perspectives vetted by representatives of US agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, along with representatives from European, South American, and Asian science agencies. This will help foster the creation of a community of broader impacts researchers and interested groups.