Previous updates

Archived content: This page contains historical updates from 2022-2023.

For current news, visit our main website news page or follow us on Bluesky (@unjournal.bsky.social).

Update: 21 July 2023

Funding

The SFF grant is now 'in our account'. This makes it possible for us to move forward in filling staff and contractor positions and increase evaluator compensation and incentives/rewards.

Timelines, and pipelines

Our "Pilot Phase," involving ten papers and roughly 20 evaluations, is almost complete.

Call for "Field Specialists"

We partitioned research monitoring amongst "Field Specialists" who focus on particular areas of research, policy, or impactful outcomes.

Increase in evaluator compensation

We increased the base compensation for evaluations to $400, and set aside $150 per evaluation for incentives, rewards, and prizes.

New Advisory Board members

• Gary Charness, Professor of Economics, UC Santa Barbara

• Nicolas Treich, Associate Researcher, INRAE, Toulouse School of Economics

• Anca Hanea, Associate Professor, University of Melbourne

• Jordan Dworkin, Program Lead, Impetus Institute for Meta-science

• Michael Wiebe, Data Scientist, Economist Consultant

Update: 1 June 2023

Survival and Flourishing Fund grant

We were awarded a grant of $304,000 from the Survival and Flourishing Fund. This will support The Unjournal through mid-2025.

What we've done and learned so far

As of this update, we had begun evaluation processes for nine papers, completed six full evaluation packages, and learned valuable lessons about our workflow.

Update: 6 May 2023

Progress on evaluations

We continued processing evaluations and releasing evaluation packages on PubPub.

Funding news

We received notification of our SFF grant award.

Update: 22 April 2023

Continued progress on pilot evaluations and process refinement.

Update: 17 Mar 2023

Early pilot phase progress and team building.

Update: 19 Feb 2023

Initial pilot phase activities and setup.

Earlier updates (2022)

For the earliest updates from 2022, these documented our initial planning, grant applications, and founding activities. Key milestones included:

• ACX/LTFF grant awarded

• Initial team formation

• Platform selection and setup

• First papers identified for evaluation