Designing a System for Improved Null Results Tracking: Berkeley, CA - December 2019

该奖项支持将于2019年12月在社会科学年会上与伯克利透明倡议一起举办的关于“设计改进的零结果跟踪系统”的研讨会。研讨会将侧重于设计一个可持续的、综合的和多方利益攸关方系统，以改进对所有资助研究成果的监测和获取。产生无效结果的研究项目不太可能被发表，但对公众和研究界来说仍然是一个有价值的资源。虽然已经开始出现几个机制来解决这一问题，但这些办法往往不协调，许多机构缺乏采用这些办法的能力。这次研讨会将召集一个由研究利益攸关方组成的跨学科小组，讨论改进对资助研究成果的跟踪的现有和新的方法，并特别考虑产生无效结果的项目。学术界、政策制定者和广大公众将受益于更全面地获得研究成果。面向更广泛社区的产品包括现场直播演示、演示幻灯片和综合研讨会过程和结论的报告。本次研讨会将探索综合方法，以解决社会科学和健康科学中的发表偏见、有问题的研究实践和文件抽屉问题(未发表的无效或意外的结果仍被锁在研究人员的文件柜中)等相互关联的问题。这些问题可能导致不完整和有偏见的知识体系。重点将放在力求简单、降低采用现有方法和新方法的障碍、避免研究人员和资助者的高昂交易成本以及确保符合科学诚信和公共利益的价值观上。这次活动将首先讨论研究资助机构和其他机构目前如何组织科学的设计失败问题，以便在小组内就需要解决的优先问题达成共识。随后的发言和讨论将集中于研究登记的有效性、结果储存库的实施、如何增加报告无效结果的好处或降低成本，以及研究界监测登记研究的未报告结果的战略。参与者还将讨论如何可行地实施和测试这样的系统。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award provides support for a workshop on "Designing a System for Improved Null Results Tracking," to be held in December 2019 in conjunction with the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences Annual Meeting. The workshop will focus on the design of a sustainable, integrated, and multi-stakeholder system for improving the monitoring of and access to outputs from all funded research. Research projects that yield null findings are less likely to be published, yet still may serve as a valuable resource to both the public and the research community. While several mechanisms have begun to emerge to address this problem, these approaches tend not to be coordinated, and many institutions lack the capacity to adopt them. This workshop will convene an interdisciplinary group of research stakeholders to discuss existing and new approaches for improving the tracking of funded research outputs, with special consideration for projects that yield null results. The academic community, policymakers, and the public at large would benefit from more complete access to research results. Products for the broader community include recordings of live-streamed presentations, presentation slides, and a report synthesizing the workshop's proceedings and conclusions.This workshop will explore integrated approaches for addressing the inter-related problems of publication bias, questionable research practices, and the file drawer problem (where unpublished null or unexpected results remain locked away in researchers' file cabinets) in the social and health sciences. These problems can lead to incomplete and biased bodies of knowledge. Emphasis will be placed on striving for simplicity, lowering barriers to uptake of existing and new approaches, and avoiding high transaction costs for researchers and funders, as well as on ensuring compatibility with the values of scientific integrity and public interest. The event will begin with a discussion of design failures in how science is currently organized in research funding agencies and other institutions in order to build consensus within the group on priority issues to be addressed. Subsequent presentations and discussions will center on topics such as the effectiveness of study registries, the implementation of results repositories, how the benefits of reporting null results could be increased or the costs reduced, and strategies for research community monitoring of unreported results from registered studies. Participants also will deliberate about how such a system could feasibly be implemented and tested.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.