Metascience

News

• Norway invites input to a new long-term plan for research and innovation by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research. The plan, due in autumn 2027, ties research policy closer to innovation and competitiveness and will concentrate on especially strong groups; higher education is now handled separately. October 20, 2026.
• Villum Foundation funds a study of its own high-risk programme by CBS. DKK 5m for Hans Christian Kongsted’s team to test whether the anonymous Villum Experiment draws and selects riskier ideas, what they lead to, and who dares to propose them. October 22, 2026.
• China publishes its first open report on its fundamental research system by NSFC and the NSFC–Wuhan University Observatory for Global Fundamental Research. Built on open data, it compares 25 systems, including Denmark, without rankings, and discusses gaps such as research in Chinese missing from global datasets. See James Wilsdon’s account. October 20, 2026.
• FAS recruits three metascience fellows to embed in US research agencies by the Federation of American Scientists. One-year placements at agencies such as NSF and DOE to generate evidence on grantmaking and peer review and design funding experiments; applications close 9 November 2026. October 2026.
• UK Metascience Unit opens £2m “Data for metascience” sandpit by UKRI. A five-day sandpit in March 2027 to develop projects on R&D funding questions that inform policy; expressions of interest 27 October to 24 November. October 20, 2026.
• UKRI publishes a single research data policy by UKRI. It replaces earlier policies with one framework for FAIR data, simpler data management plans, research software sharing and guidance on sharing data about people, from 1 April 2027. October 14, 2026.
• Irish presidency proposes FP10 at €158 billion, 10% below the Commission by Research Professional News. Parliament's co-leads hold to €200 billion; the proposal also cuts Erasmus+ and the Competitiveness Fund.
• NWO drops Web of Science and Scopus for open research information by NWO. The Dutch Research Council will use Crossref and OpenAlex instead from 2027, following CNRS, several Dutch universities and CWTS. October 9, 2026.
• UK commits £1bn to regional innovation clusters and moves to devolve innovation funding to mayors by Research Professional News. UKRI’s £500m Local Innovation Partnerships Fund will pass to mayoral control from 2028. October 9, 2026.
• UK Metascience Unit funds projects on AI-driven research evaluation by UKRI. About £5m for seven projects on AI-driven indicators of rigour, novelty, fraud and other aspects of quality, meant to assist human reviewers. The Unit stresses it is building evidence, not committing to use them. October 8, 2026.
• Four US agencies launch metascience initiatives at White House science summit by the White House. First experiments: golden tickets and distributed review at NSF, double-blind review at NASA, golden tickets at DOE, and a $174m NIH reproducibility initiative, alongside an X-Labs Consortium and what the administration calls over $6 billion in commitments. October 8, 2026.
• NSF launches Office of Metascience, X-Labs Consortium and prize challenges by NSF. The office will test new review and funding mechanisms and share its experiments and findings openly; NSF and UKRI will collaborate on metascience and start an international network of government metascience units. October 8, 2026.
• DFiR to build shared data on the path from research to company by Altinget. The Danish research policy council will spend three years linking data on research, technology transfer, soft funding and private capital, with Innovationsfonden and Danske Universiteter. October 5, 2026.
• Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science by the White House. The US and 16 countries endorse a statement with three priorities, improving the institutions of discovery, “Super Intelligence” for science and scientific talent. It notes the value of “a deliberate portfolio of funding mechanisms” and of “dedicated metascience capabilities” in government. October 4, 2026.
• Metascience 2027 announced for Montreal by the Center for Open Science. The global metascience conference will be held in Montreal on June 14–16, 2027, co-hosted by the Tanenbaum Open Science Institute and the Center for Open Science, with Annabel Seyller and Vincent Larivière co-chairing the programme. October 2026.
• EU R&I chief wants ‘creative destruction’ and Horizon opening by Research Professional News. Marc Lemaître calls for “alternative funding methods” in the next Horizon programme; newcomers are 55% of Horizon Europe participants but win 14% of the funding. October 2, 2026.
• ESRC targets project diversity and risk-taking in grants shake-up by Research Professional News. The ESRC replaces its broad applicant-led schemes with Grow (up to £500,000), Explore (up to £2m, teams of up to four, a design drawn from metascience evidence) and Challenge (up to £10m), open year-round, to manage its portfolio and back more risk-taking research. October 1, 2026.
• South Korea sets AI research ethics guidelines for national R&D by Digital Today. Hidden prompts aimed at AI-assisted review become research misconduct, and AI use in R&D projects must be disclosed. September 20, 2026.
• NSF establishes an Office of Metascience by NSF. Acting director Brian Stone announces a portfolio approach that matches funding mechanisms to the nature of the work, review experiments, and an Office of Metascience that will publish the results of its experiments, positive and negative. September 10, 2026.
• Center for Open Science opens in Brussels by COS. COS establishes an independent international nonprofit (AISBL) in Belgium as its European base. September 10, 2026.
• Forskerbevægelsen proposes a fixed annual research budget for Danish researchers by Uniavisen. DKK 100,000 a year for each permanent associate and full professor, around DKK 700m in total, to test ideas without a grant application. September 16, 2026.
• The Netherlands sets out its DARPA-style agency NADI by the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs. €500m for an agency where programme managers run competing R&D teams, set up as a state-owned company and fully operational by mid-2028. September 15, 2026.
• UKRI modernises grant assessment for the age of AI by UKRI. Eight measures from October 2026, including distributed peer review, staff triage and a trial of AI-assisted assessment with the UK Metascience Unit. September 10, 2026.
• Catalyze: a new funding model to connect donors and scientific research by Inside Philanthropy. A platform that surfaces highly rated but unfunded NIH and NSF proposals so philanthropists can back vetted science. September 1, 2026.
• Europe weighs its own metascience unit by Science|Business. The case for an experimental metascience unit in the European Commission, running funding experiments through the ERC and EIC. August 2026.
• Reforming UKRI eligibility by Science Works. An open letter arguing that eligibility rules keep new research organisations, such as FROs, out of UK public funding. August 19, 2026.
• NSF announces $1.5B for foundational research by NSF. Twelve funding opportunities and a portfolio approach that matches mechanism, duration and review method to the research, with many calls framed as experiments. August 17, 2026.
• NIH proposes replacing numerical peer review scores by NIH. A request for information on replacing impact scores and percentiles with broad tiers. August 2026.
• Science: A New Golden Age by White House / OSTP. The US report calling for funding people over projects, diversified grant mechanisms and metascience units in every major agency. July 21, 2026.
• Fast Grants for British Progress: Call for Proposals by the Centre for British Progress. Small, fast grants for research and policy work on UK growth and progress, with funding decisions within two weeks and no academic affiliation required; applications considered weekly on a rolling basis. July 1, 2026.
• Debatten om metascience giver et alt for snævert billede. Der er behov for at brede samtalen ud by David Hilmer Rex. Argues the Danish metascience debate has become too narrow, and that the agendas within the field complement rather than compete with one another. The vision: a more diverse ecosystem of institutions and new social practices for science, equipped for a future of many unknowns. Science Report, June 27, 2026.
• Reimagining Science's Social Compact: a call for Letters of Interest by The Packard Foundation & The Kavli Foundation. Funding for projects that reimagine the social compact for science — the norms governing how science is funded, conducted, governed, and held accountable to the public. Framed against the Vannevar Bush settlement; two-phase process, Phase II budgets up to $75,000. Phase I Letters of Interest due July 22, 2026. June 25, 2026.
• Europe as science superpower: what it will take to rival the US and China by Elizabeth Gibney. Europe wants to position itself as a research haven amid US chaos; EU allocates €900M to recruit researchers and Horizon Europe may reach €175–200B, but a structural innovation gap vs. the US and China persists. Nature, June 23, 2026.
• Report of the Franco-German Task Force on Breakthrough Innovation. Nicolas Dufourcq, Rafael Laguna de la Vera et al. French Ministry of Economy / German Ministry of Research, Technology and Space. Task force includes Philippe Aghion (2025 Nobel Economics Prize), Thomas Kalil (Renaissance Philanthropy), Fidji Simo (OpenAI Applications), and André Loesekrug-Pietri (JEDI). Recommends France establish a dedicated ARPA-type entity interoperable with Germany's SPRIND from day one; extracts five invariants of the model (empowered program managers, mission-oriented time-bound programs, high-risk posture, connected science, institutional independence). Argues France's gap is institutional, not financial — France 2030 has committed €54B. June 18, 2026.
• Science Works launches by Research Professional News. Ben Johnson and Laura Ryan's independent UK R&D policy studio — focused on institutional diversity, AI and science, and British scientific renewal — goes public. June 2026.
• Radial supports The Deliverome Project with $5M seed funding by Becky Pferdehirt. Astera Institute's life sciences arm funds a nonprofit building an open-source atlas of cell surface proteins to unlock targeted drug delivery. May 27, 2026.
• RoRI launches META-MOMENT, a 21-country study of metascience by the Research on Research Institute. Launched at the Global Research Council with funder heads from the UK, Norway, Australia, Canada, Japan and Namibia; a report is due in November 2026. May 19, 2026.
• NSF announces $1.5B NSF X-Labs initiative to pursue generational breakthrough science efforts by NSF. May 14, 2026.
• Open Source for Science Fund Launches to Power AI-Driven Discovery by Renaissance Philanthropy. $20M fund for open source software infrastructure in life sciences and AI research. May 4, 2026.
• Research Ireland publishes its first Programme Plan by Research Ireland. The new agency consolidates its schemes, adds an institutional mechanism for PhDs and postdocs, and promises a more predictable funding offer. April 20, 2026.
• Meeting the moment: how scientific philanthropies are expanding their reach by Nature. April 22, 2026.
• Why I'm joining Astera to lead Radial by Becky Pferdehirt. March 11, 2026.
• Britain's moonshot factory has a moment of opportunity by John Thornhill. June 19, 2025.
• A New Vision for Science Diplomacy: Q&A With Cassidy Sugimoto by Georgia Tech News. June 23, 2025.
• Former MIT researchers advance a new model for innovation by Zach Winn. June 6, 2025.
• Demonstrating end-to-end scientific discovery with Robin: a multi-agent system by FutureHouse. May 20, 2025.
• FutureHouse Platform: Superintelligent AI Agents for Scientific Discovery. May 1, 2025.

Media

Podcasts

• Idea Machines — Ben Reinhardt's long-form interviews on how breakthroughs happen and how to create the conditions for more of them.
• Macroscience — Caleb Watney and Tim Hwang on science policy, the mechanics of innovation, and the institutions that govern research.
• Proof of DeSci — interviews across the decentralized science ecosystem: funding models, DAOs, and emerging infrastructure.
• The DeSci Podcast — conversations with builders, researchers, and funders at the intersection of science and web3.
• Foresight Institute talks — seminars on nanotechnology, longevity, computation, and the long-run future of science and technology.

Newsletters

• Metascience — this newsletter: new entries, primers, and developments across the ecosystem. Also on LinkedIn.
• DeSci Weekly — weekly roundup of news, funding, and commentary from the decentralized science space.
• FreakTakes — Eric Gilliam on the history and future of innovative research, with focus on biotech and institutional design.
• Works in Progress — long-form essays on how things get better and what holds progress back, across science, technology, and policy.

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Organizations

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Tools & Ideas

• Roadmapping and Gap Mapping — systematic methods for identifying where scientific infrastructure is missing and where a targeted intervention could unlock progress across a field.
• Alternative Funding Mechanisms — lotteries, prizes, advance market commitments, regranting, and people-not-projects models that shift what kinds of science get funded. See the funding mechanisms primer.
• The ARPA Model — programme-manager-driven, mission-oriented research funding pioneered by DARPA; being replicated through ARIA, ARPA-H, ARPA-E, and SPRIND.
• Preregistration and Registered Reports — tools for separating hypothesis generation from analysis, reducing publication bias, and making research more credible before results are known.
• Open Access and Open Infrastructure — from preprint servers and open datasets to FAIR data principles and open-source lab tools that make science more cumulative.

→ Full tools and ideas directory