prologue to an open letter

Considering the historical technologies for doing science, it makes sense that public funding for research is administered via a competitive, hierarchical model. Science is too big for everyone to get together in one room and discuss. However, contemporary communication technologies and open practices seem to promise something different: a sustained public conversation about research. The new way of doing things would "redeem" the intellectual capital currently lost in rejected research proposals, and would provide postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers with additional learning opportunities through a system of peer support.

JISC recently ran an experiment moving in this direction (the "JISC Elevator"), but the actual incentive structure ended up being similar to other grant funding schemes,with 6 of 26 proposals funded. It strikes me that if we saw the same numbers in a classroom setting (6 pass, 20 fail), we would find that pretty appalling. Of course, people have the opportunity to re-apply with changes in response to another call, but the overheads in that approach are quite high. What if instead of a winners-take-all competitive model, we took a more collaborative and learning-oriented approach to funding research, with "applicants" working together, in consultation with funders – until their ideas were ready? In the end, it's not so much about increasing the acceptance rate, but increasing the throughput of good ideas! Open peer review couldn't "save" the most flawed proposals; nevertheless, it could help expose and understand the flaws – allowing contributors to learn from their mistakes and move on.

With such an approach, funding for "research and postgraduate training" would be fruitfully combined. This modest proposal hinges on one simple point: transparency. Much as the taxpayer "should" have access to research results they pay for (cf. the recent of appointment of Jimmy Wales as a UK government advisor) and scientists "should" have access to the journals that they publish in (cf. Winston Hide's recent resignation as editor of Genomics), so to do we as citizen-scientists have a moral imperative to be transparent about how research funding is allocated, and how research is done. Not just transparent: positively pastoral.