A New Model for Research Funding – Microfunding

In May 2009, two independent scholarly meetings were held in Toronto and Rome to address questions concerning (respectively) the sharing of prepublication and post-publication scientific research data.  Though the goal of the former was to reaffirm and refine, where needed, policies related to the early release of genomic data, and that of the latter was to develop a coordinated and directed approach to the main factors inhibiting free sharing of the fruits of publicly funded mouse research; the underlying issue both meetings had been convened to address was the general inaccessibility of contemporary scientific research data, and the degree to which closed-door research practices should be adapted (or abandoned) in order to encourage increased openness and accessibility.

In late 2009, two formal reports were published in the scholarly journal Nature presenting the summary remarks of these meetings, and it is the content of these remarks that have inspired this article.

Within contemporary scholarly practice, the results of research projects are published in an abridged form – where salient ideas and supporting facts are combined in a single discrete ‘package’.  Raw data, however, is rarely (if ever) included in such publications.  Despite the general sentiment conveyed in these remarks encouraging increased openness and data-sharing in academic research; both stopped short of expressing any commitment on behalf of the research community to proactively engage in more open research practices – asking, instead, that funding agenciestake the initiative toward introducing openness into the research process by requiring that data-sharing plans be presented as part of grant applications.

While much may be said for the progress that contemporary scientific researchers have made toward increasing our collective understanding of the world in which we live; the resistance encountered by those who have sought to increase openness in scholarly research, and the degree to which the intellectual fruits of each scientific inquiry may be accessed by others, remains the Achilles heel of a community which has long prided itself upon the nobility of its ultimate mission – the acquisition of knowledge and understanding.

The question, unfortunately, that few appear to be interested in addressing – or, for that matter, asking is - why?

The most reasonable answer to this question, as it may be gleaned from reports such as those published in the aforementioned issue of Nature, is fairly straightforward – and mirrors the classic psychological thought problem referred to as the prisoner’s dilemma.  As described by Russian mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport (1911-2007), and his student Albert M. Chammah, the nickname Prisoner’s Dilemma, attributed to A.W. Tucker, derives from the original anecdote used to illustrate the game.  Two prisoners, held incommunicado, are charged with the same crime.  They can be convicted only if either confesses [...] Further, if only one confesses, he is set free for having turned state’s evidence and is given a reward to boot [...] The prisoner who has held out is convicted on the strength of the other’s testimony and is given a more severe sentence than if he had also confessed [...] It is in the interest of each to confess whatever the other does.  But it is in their collective interest to hold out.”

For individual researchers, the act of increasing the accessibility of your data and work increases the likelihood that (a) it may be stolen by your competitors, (b) flaws in your approach may be discovered, and that (c) your peers may utilize your data to derive conclusions you may not have considered yourself and which may possess a scientific worth greater than your own.  It is, thus, in the self-interest of each individual researcher to maintain a degree of inaccessibility with respect to their research data.  To illustrate these concerns, consider the following theoretical situation:

You discover an herb in a remote corner of the world that is applied by the local population as a treatment for burns.  This herbal treatment, you observe, works remarkably well, and soon you begin seriously contemplating the prospect of studying it’s chemical properties in the hope of deriving a synthetic counterpart that may be mass-produced and marketed as a treatment for burns worldwide.  Once you have made the decision to continue along this path, however, you run into the above-described dilemma.  If you publish your discovery, or portions of your data while you are engaged in analyzing this compound, you expose yourself to the risk that another researcher will take your initial ideas and ‘beat you to the punch’ by working faster or more efficiently than you (possibly due to their ability to access greater sources of funding).  If you choose to wait until after you have developed your synthetic treatment and announced your results, to publish your data, however, while you may have avoided the risk of your peers ‘beating you to the punch’, you now expose yourself to the risk that somebody will discover flaws in your method, and invalidate your conclusions – or worse – discover ways to improve the efficacy of the treatment you have derived by altering steps in your procedure and producing a treatment more effective than your own – thereby rendering your work, and your treatment, commercially useless.

That being said – and while these concerns may illustrate why individual researchers behave as they do; the degree of inaccessibility that exists within contemporary scientific research is of no benefit to the scientific research community as a whole; nor to the broader society that largely finances, and is ultimately served by the understanding gleaned from each individual scientific inquiry.

Scientific research is founded upon the principal of reproducibility. Because scientists hold that there is no absolute correct answer to any scientific question; the validity of all experimental conclusions is a byproduct of the degree to which it may be reproduced by others. If, in other words, a given experiment is conducted properly, and a valid conclusion reached; another researcher conducting the same experiment under the same conditions should be able to reproduce the result recorded by the original investigator. An inability to do so implies that some error must exist within the original procedure, or in the logic applied by the original researcher in formulating their theory.

Ultimately, however, it is the student (and future researcher) who seeks to build upon the work of their predecessors who suffers the most from this inaccessibility to scientific research data as they are then forced to either (a) place their faith in the validity of the study conducted by their predecessor, or (b) make assumptions regarding the conditions under which the original study was conducted in order to better formulate their own study and interpret its results.

Being a firm believer in the idea that progress cannot be achieved simply by identifying the problem which exists in the status quo; the approach I believe holds the most promise in transforming the status quo is one where incentives are provided for researchers who choose to engage in open-research practices; and where sufficient precautions are taken to protect the intellectual property that this data represents.

Currently, the primary obstacle to encouraging a communal shift toward open research is the manner by which research grants and faculty appointments are awarded.

Within the status quo, both financial grants and academic faculty positions are awarded based upon the number of publications a candidate has contributed toward, the quality of the journals in which they were published, and (to a lesser extent) the degree to which each has since been cited by other authors engaged in similar fields of study. In other words – as the old adage reads – researchers must “publish or perish”.

What if, however, researchers were able to generate funding from sources outside the traditional network of grant agencies? What if researchers were provided an opportunity to interact directly with members of the general public – particularly those entrepreneurs who may ultimately develop the industrial applications that will render their research commercially valuable?

While it is highly unlikely that individual citizens will be able to afford, let alone be willing to contribute (in their entirety) the large budgets some research projects demand; what if the weight of this total budget were spread across a large community of individuals? If we consider the minute size of the individual investment necessary to sustain such a financial model (the non-profit US-based organization Kiva has distributed $81,993,335.00 US gathered from 527,583 lenders – average loan size: $413.11 US); the prospect of funding scientific research projects with the aid of direct public investment becomes increasingly feasible, especially if we keep in mind the utility afforded us by the internet to reach such a community of individuals at a minimal cost.

Such a model of direct-investment would, furthermore, enable researchers to develop their professional reputation based upon the overall quality of the work they conduct, as well as develop an openly-accessible portfolio of research material and data that would provide a far deeper insight into the overall quality of their work than a mere publication (or list of publications) ever could.

As noted above; simply providing access to a larger pool of finances, however, will not be enough to bring about the change needed in order to truly compel researchers to abandon contemporary closed-door research practices for their open alternatives. Precautions will also have to be taken to ensure that each individual researcher is properly credited for the work they have conducted, and the body of data they have produced. There are, potentially, several techniques that may be applied in concert to achieve these ends. These include (1) limiting the release of data and related records prior to publication, (2) releasing – in full – all data and related records following publication, and (3) ensuring that the license under which this data and information is ultimately published for open access is mutually designed to facilitate further analysis by other researchers while ensuring that their progenitor is properly accredited for their gathering – a viable candidate for this license may be the Reproducible Research Standard currently being developed by Yale Postdoctoral Associate and Kauffman Fellow Victoria Stodden.

I am under no illusion that the task of creating a more open scientific research culture will be easy. But it is what we must do, precisely because of the increasingly important role that scientific research promises to play in our rapidly growing human society. Just as transparency and accessibility have long remained the elusive goals of political establishments; so too have they now become those of the institutions which have been built around and upon the community of scientific researchers.

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