Workshop: A New Synthesis for the Science of Science

本次研讨会的目标是制定一个新的综合“科学的科学”，为发展和验证对社会和认知不平等起源的因果理解及其对知识生产的影响制定议程。新的科学知识来自于数千名在学科内和跨学科工作的研究人员的集体和相互联系的努力。众所周知，科学工作者的组成决定了科学发现的形成，其社会结构是复杂的、不断发展的，并且越来越多地涉及跨学科。然而，科学内部的不平等现象既普遍又持续存在，这些现象出现在学术界的个人和组织层面。本次研讨会旨在产生的“新综合”将有助于使不同的研究团体联合起来，研究与知识生产中社会和认知不平等的原因和后果有关的具体问题。研讨会的一个可能结果是写一篇集体议程设定的观点文章，向更广泛的社区展示这些想法，这也将有助于指导政策制定者和资助者了解限制科学进步的偶然结构的已知和未知。这次跨学科研讨会将汇集来自不同社区的专家，探讨识别、辩论和制定以证据为基础的政策等具体问题，以解决科学中真正的机会不平等问题，从而加快科学发现的步伐和多样性。在这个方向上的进步需要在“科学的科学”领域发展一种新的综合，具体地发展一种对推动这些不平等并使其持续存在的社会、竞争和结构因素的因果理解。科学家、组织和激励机制组成的生态系统的复杂和动态结构阻碍了过去解开这一因果结构的努力。通过召集一群从不同角度研究科学的有成就的学者，本次研讨会旨在为跨学科研究如何结合现代数字基础设施（包括书目数据库、领域的数字普查、因果推理和机器学习的强大工具），可以突破过去的障碍，创造一个真正科学理解的科学生态系统。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The goal of this workshop is to formulate a new synthesis of the "science of science" that sets an agenda for developing and validating causal understandings of the origins of social and epistemic inequalities, and their consequences for knowledge production. New scientific knowledge comes from the collective and linked efforts of thousands of researchers working within and across disciplines. The makeup of this scientific workforce is known to shape what scientific discoveries are made, and its social structure is complex, evolving, and increasingly interdisciplinary. However, inequalities within science are both pervasive and persistent, and these appear across both the individual and organizational levels of the academy. The "new synthesis" this workshop aims to produce will help align a diverse set of research communities toward specific questions related to the causes and consequences of social and epistemic inequalities in the production of knowledge. A likely outcome of the workshop is writing a collective agenda-setting perspective piece that presents these ideas to the broader community, which will also help guide policy makers and funders as to what is known and unknown about the casual structures that limit scientific progress. This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together experts from a diverse set of communities to engage specific questions of identifying, debating, and developing evidence-based policies that resolve genuine inequalities of opportunity in science, in order to increase the pace and diversity of scientific discoveries. Progress in this direction requires developing a new synthesis in the area of the "science of science," to specifically develop a causal understanding of the social, competitive, and structural factors that drive these inequalities and make them so persistent. The complex and dynamic structure of the ecosystem of scientists, organizations, and incentives has inhibited past efforts to unravel this causal structure. By convening a diverse set of accomplished scholars all studying the science of science from different perspectives, this workshop seeks to formulate a new and integrated vision for how interdisciplinary research, in combination with modern digital infrastructure (including bibliographic databases, digital censuses of fields, and the powerful tools of causal inference and machine learning), can break through the past barriers to create a genuinely scientific understanding of the scientific ecosystem.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.