Envisioning the Future of the Research Enterprise

Overview

<p>Call for Proposals: IRIS Researcher Awards<br>The Institute for Research on Innovation and Science (IRIS) seeks to fund researchers who will use the IRIS data to address questions about the social and economic returns to investments in research. IRIS seeks to enable fundamental research on the results of public and private investments that support discovery, innovation, and education on the campuses of U.S. universities. We accomplish that goal by: (1) collecting and curating data from universities around the country; (2) cleaning, integrating and protecting that data in our capacity as an IRB approved data repository; (3) partnering with the U.S. Census Bureau to link university data to restricted federal micro-data; and, (4) making the resulting datasets as broadly available to research users as the law and responsible research practice allow. The IRIS dataset is available to researchers within the secure IRIS Virtual Data Enclave (VDE) environment. A mirror of this dataset with linkages to restricted Census data is available through the Federal Statistical Data Center (FSRDC) system (see here.) This dataset is comprised of two collections: (i) core files in which researchers find university financial and personnel administrative data pertaining to sponsored project expenditures at IRIS member universities during a given year; (ii) crosswalk files linking IRIS data to external datasets (e.g., publication, patent, federal award data) at the individual and award level.<br>Up to $15,000 for dissertation awards and up to $30,000 for early career and established researcher awards will be disbursed to the recipient’s institution. Funds can be used for personnel (e.g., research assistance, salaries, or stipend if recipient is a student), equipment, supplies, travel (may include travel mandated by the award), and other expenses (e.g., professional development and training). Awards can include 15% overhead or indirect costs to be paid as a part of the award total.<br>Description of Eligible Research<br>Proposals submitted for IRIS Researcher Awards must emphasize the use of IRIS data in projects that address open issues in the study of science and technology and in science policy. Topics of particular interest include but will not be limited to: (1) new methods to estimate social and economic return on investment for funding from various sources (federal, philanthropic, industrial, and institutional); (2) studies about the relationship between research training, career outcomes and the downstream productivity of employers; (3) research on the relationship between different funding sources and mechanisms and the structure and outcomes of collaboration within and across campuses; (4) analyses of the distinctive contribution university research makes to regional economic development and resilience; and (5) examinations of the effects different funding sources and mechanisms have on research teams and the productivity and efficiency of the academic research enterprise as a whole.<br>Particular attention will be given to work that develops and tests strategies for using IRIS data to support causal claims. Creative instruments and other identification strategies that can be validated in these projects will enhance the value of IRIS data for the research community. We also seek projects that develop appropriate comparisons and counterfactuals for studies of academic research contributions to the social good and economic growth. To those ends, we hope to support projects that demonstrate the feasibility and value of new data assets that might be linked with IRIS data to further improve its utility.</p>