7 Feb 2023: We have an organized founding/management committee, as well as an advisory board (see Our team). We are focusing on pushing research through the evaluation pipeline, communicating this output, and making it useful. We have a working division of labor, e.g., among "managing editors," for specific papers.
We are likely to expand our team after our pilot, conditional on further funding.
Progress: the team (continual update)
Key elements of plan
Put together founding committee, meetings, public posts, and feedback (done)
Build a "founding committee" of 5–8 experienced and enthusiastic EA-aligned or adjacent researchers at EA orgs, research academics, and practitioners (e.g., draw from speakers at recent EA Global meetings).
How was this founding committee recruited?
The creation of an action plan can be seen in the Gdoc discussion
Three key relevant areas from which to draw candidates
DR: I think I need to draw people from a few relevant areas:
1. Academia, in relevant subject fields for The Unjournal: economics, quantitative social science, maybe more
2. Effective altruism, to assess the value and scope of the journal and the research
3. Open Science and academic reform, and applied metascience—people with practical ideas and knowledge
+ People with strong knowledge of the journal and bibliometric processes and systems
First: direct outreach to a list of pivotal, prominent people
Assemble a list of the most relevant and respected people, using more or less objective criteria and justification.
Ask to join founding committee.
Ask to join list of supporters.
28 May 2022: The above has mostly been done, at least in terms of people attending the first meeting. We probably need a more systematic approach to getting the list of supporters.
Second: public call for interest
Further posts on social media, academic websites and message boards, etc.
See also public Gdoc
'Evaluators': Identifying and engaging
Status: 7 Feb 2023
Volunteer pool of 80+ reviewers (see Airtable), responding to and other outreach
For our initial 3 focal pilot papers we have a total of 8 completed evaluations (2 of these are completed subject to some final checks.
Pilot: Setting up platforms
Set up the basic platforms for posting and administering reviews and evaluations and offering curated links and categorizations of papers and projects.
Mainly configured for evaluation but it needs bespoke configuration to be efficient and easy for evaluators, particular for the quantitative ratings and predictions. Thus we are using Google Docs (or cryptpads) for the pilot. Will configure Kotahi with further funds.
Sciety group (curated evaluations and research)
Evaluations are curated in our Sciety.org group, which integrates these with the publicly-hosted research.
7 Feb 2023: We are working on
The best ways to get evaluations from "submissions on Kotahi" into Sciety,
... with the curated link to the publicly-hosted papers (or projects) on a range of platforms, including NBER
Ways to get DOIs for each evaluation and author response
Ways to integrate evaluation details as 'collaborative annotations' (with hypothes.is) into the hosted papers
(We currently use a hypothes.is workaround to have this feed into Sciety so these show up as ‘evaluated pre-prints’ in their public database, gaining a DOI.
Create private Airtable with lists of names and organizations
Added element: List of supporter names for credibility, with little or no commitment
Host a meeting (and shared collaboration space/document), to come to a consensus on a set of practical principles. [26 May 2022: First meeting held, writing up shared notes.]
Post and present our consensus (coming out of this meeting) on key fora. After a brief followup period (~1 week), consider adjusting the above consensus plan in light of the feedback, repost, and move forward.
... including descriptive and quantitative (rating and prediction elements). With feedback from evaluators and others, we are continuing to build and improve these guidelines.
Identify a small set of papers or projects as representative first-cases; use to help test the system we are building in a concrete manner.
In doing the above, we are also collecting a longer list of key papers, projects, authors, topics, issues, etc.
Steps taken
Post on EA Forum (and other places) and present (see view at bottom of this section) promoting our call for papers further, with bounty.
2. Search for most-cited papers (within our domain) among EA-aligned researchers and organizations.
3. Dig into existing lists, reviews, and syllabi, such as:
GPI (includes many posed questions)
Open Philanthropy (needs updating? few academic links)
Consider: "Mistakes" pages?
(mainly operational mistakes)
5. Appeal directly to authors and research groups
6. Cross-promote with
Pivot: direct focus on NBER working papers
Pete Slattery: "Do a complete test run using a single paper and team…" Thus, we aim to identify a small set of papers (or projects), maybe 2–3, that seem like good test and example cases, and offer a bounty for projects we choose as test cases.
Note that much of the work identified here has already been peer-reviewed and "published." While we envision that The Unjournal may assess papers that are already published in traditional journals, these are probably not the best case for the PoC. Thus, we de-prioritize these for now.
Syllabi: t; list; David Rhys-Bernard's syllabus (
Not very relevant because focused on operational issues
