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  • The Unjournal
  • An Introduction to The Unjournal
    • Content overview
    • How to get involved
      • Brief version of call
      • Impactful Research Prize (pilot)
      • Jobs and paid projects with The Unjournal
        • Advisory/team roles (research, management)
        • Administration, operations and management roles
        • Research & operations-linked roles & projects
        • Standalone project: Impactful Research Scoping (temp. pause)
      • Independent evaluations (trial)
        • Reviewers from previous journal submissions
    • Organizational roles and responsibilities
      • Unjournal Field Specialists: Incentives and norms (trial)
    • Our team
      • Reinstein's story in brief
    • Plan of action
    • Explanations & outreach
      • Press releases
      • Outreach texts
      • Related articles and work
    • Updates (earlier)
      • Impactful Research Prize Winners
      • Previous updates
  • Why Unjournal?
    • Reshaping academic evaluation: Beyond accept/reject
    • Promoting open and robust science
    • Global priorities: Theory of Change (Logic Model)
      • Balancing information accessibility and hazard concerns
    • Promoting 'Dynamic Documents' and 'Living Research Projects'
      • Benefits of Dynamic Documents
      • Benefits of Living Research Projects
    • The File Drawer Effect (Article)
    • Open, reliable, and useful evaluation
      • Multiple dimensions of feedback
  • Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
    • For research authors
    • Evaluation ('refereeing')
    • Suggesting and prioritizing research
  • Our policies: evaluation & workflow
    • Project submission, selection and prioritization
      • What research to target?
      • What specific areas do we cover?
      • Process: prioritizing research
        • Prioritization ratings: discussion
      • Suggesting research (forms, guidance)
      • "Direct evaluation" track
      • "Applied and Policy" Track
      • 'Conditional embargos' & exceptions
      • Formats, research stage, publication status
    • Evaluation
      • For prospective evaluators
      • Guidelines for evaluators
        • Why these guidelines/metrics?
        • Proposed curating robustness replication
        • Conventional guidelines for referee reports
      • Why pay evaluators (reviewers)?
      • Protecting anonymity
    • Mapping evaluation workflow
      • Evaluation workflow – Simplified
    • Communicating results
    • Recap: submissions
  • What is global-priorities-relevant research?
  • "Pivotal questions"
    • ‘Operationalizable’ questions
    • Why "operationalizable questions"?
  • Action and progress
    • Pilot steps
      • Pilot: Building a founding committee
      • Pilot: Identifying key research
      • Pilot: Setting up platforms
      • Setting up evaluation guidelines for pilot papers
      • 'Evaluators': Identifying and engaging
    • Plan of action (cross-link)
  • Grants and proposals
    • Survival and Flourishing Fund (successful)
    • ACX/LTFF grant proposal (as submitted, successful)
      • Notes: post-grant plan and revisions
      • (Linked proposals and comments - moved for now)
    • Unsuccessful applications
      • Clearer Thinking FTX regranting (unsuccessful)
      • FTX Future Fund (for further funding; unsuccessful)
      • Sloan
  • Parallel/partner initiatives and resources
    • eLife
    • Peer Communities In
    • Sciety
    • Asterisk
    • Related: EA/global priorities seminar series
    • EA and EA Forum initiatives
      • EA forum peer reviewing (related)
      • Links to EA Forum/"EA journal"
    • Other non-journal evaluation
    • Economics survey (Charness et al.)
  • Management details [mostly moved to Coda]
    • Governance of The Unjournal
    • Status, expenses, and payments
    • Evaluation manager process
      • Choosing evaluators (considerations)
        • Avoiding COI
        • Tips and text for contacting evaluators (private)
    • UJ Team: resources, onboarding
    • Policies/issues discussion
    • Research scoping discussion spaces
    • Communication and style
  • Tech, tools and resources
    • Tech scoping
    • Hosting & platforms
      • PubPub
      • Kotahi/Sciety (phased out)
        • Kotahi: submit/eval/mgmt (may be phasing out?)
        • Sciety (host & curate evals)
    • This GitBook; editing it, etc
    • Other tech and tools
      • Cryptpad (for evaluator or other anonymity)
      • hypothes.is for collab. annotation
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  • Fields, methods, and approaches
  • Why this field/method focus?
  • Ex.: work we included/excluded based on field/method
  • Outcomes, focus areas, and causes
  • Fields
  • Examples of work we chose to prioritize or de-prioritize based on focus area

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  1. Our policies: evaluation & workflow
  2. Project submission, selection and prioritization

What specific areas do we cover?

This discussion is a work-in-progress

PreviousWhat research to target?NextProcess: prioritizing research

Last updated 1 year ago

Was this helpful?

  1. We are targeting ...

  2. With the potential for impact, and with the potential for Unjournal evaluations to have an impact (see our and our discussions).

  3. Our is quantitative work that informs , especially in , informing our .

  4. We give a data presentation of the work we have already covered and the work we are prioritizing , which will be continually updated.

But what does this mean in practice? What specific research fields, topics, and approaches are we likely to classify as 'relevant to evaluate'?

We give some lists and annotated examples below.

Fields, methods, and approaches

As of January 2024 The Unjournal focuses on ...

  1. Research where the fundamental question being investigated involves human behavior and beliefs and the consequences of these. This may involve markets, production processes, economic constraints, social interactions, technology, the 'market of ideas', individual psychology, government processes, and more. However, the main research question should not revolve around issues outside of human behavior, such as physical science, biology, or computer science and engineering. These areas are out of our scope (at least for now).

  2. Research that is fundamentally quantitative and uses . It will generally involve or consider measurable inputs, choices, and outcomes; specific categorical or quantitative questions; analytical and mathematical reasoning; hypothesis testing and/or belief updating, etc.

  3. Research that targets and addresses a single specific question or goals, or a small cluster. It should not mainly be a broad discussion and overview of other research or conceptual issues.

This to generally involves the academic fields:

  • Economics

  • Applied Statistics (and some other applied math)

  • Psychology

  • Political Science

  • Other quantitative social science fields (perhaps Sociology)

  • Applied "business school" fields: finance, accounting, operations, etc.

  • Applied "policy and impact evaluation" fields

  • Life science/medicine where it targets human behavior/social science

These discipline/field boundaries are not strict; they may adapt as we grow

Why this field/method focus?

These were chosen in light of two main factors:

  1. Our founder and our team is most comfortable assessing and managing the consideration of research in these areas.

Ex.: work we included/excluded based on field/method

To do: We will give and explain some examples here

Outcomes, focus areas, and causes

The Unjournal's mission is to prioritize

  • research with the strongest potential for a positive impact on global welfare

  • where public evaluation of this research will have the greatest impact

Given this broad goal, we consider research into any cause, topic, or outcome, as long as the research involves fields, methods, and approaches within our domain (see above), and as long as the work meets our other requirements (e.g., research must be publicly shared without a paywall).

While we don't have rigid boundaries, we are nonetheless focusing on certain areas:

Fields

(As of Jan. 2024) we have mainly commissioned evaluations of work involving development economics and health-related outcomes and interventions in low-and middle-income countries.

As well as research involving

  • Environmental economics, conservation, harm to human health

  • The social impact of AI and emerging technologies

  • Economics, welfare, and governance

  • Catastrophic risks; predicting and responding to these risks

  • The economics of innovation; scientific progress and meta-science

  • The economics of health, happiness, and wellbeing

We are currently prioritizing further work involving

  • Psychology, behavioral science, and attitudes: the spread of misinformation; other-regarding preferences and behavior; moral circles

  • Animal welfare: markets, attitudes

  • Methodological work informing high-impact research (e.g., methods for impact evaluation)

We are also considering prioritizing work involving

  • AI governance and safety

  • Quantitative political science (voting, lobbying, attitudes)

  • Political risks (including authoritarian governments and war and conflict)

  • Institutional decisionmaking and policymaking

  • Long-term growth and trends; the long-term future of civilization; forecasting

Examples of work we chose to prioritize or de-prioritize based on focus area

To do: We will give and explain some examples here

These fields seem to be particularly amenable to, and able to benefit from our journal-independent evaluation approach. Other fields, such as biology, are already being 'served' by strong initiatives like .

Peer Communities In
global priorities-relevant research
prioritization ratings
global priorities (see linked discussion)
Theory of Change
here
high-level considerations