A Vision for the Future of Science Philanthropy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Evan Michelson and Adam Falk: “If science is to accomplish all that society hopes it will in the years ahead, philanthropy will need to be an important contributor to those developments. It is therefore critical that philanthropic funders understand how to maximize science philanthropy’s contribution to the research enterprise. Given these stakes, what will science philanthropy need to get right in the coming years in order to have a positive impact on the scientific enterprise and to help move society toward greater collective well-being?

The answer, we argue, is that science philanthropies will increasingly need to serve a broader purpose. They certainly must continue to provide funding to promote new discoveries throughout the physical and social sciences. But they will also have to provide this support in a manner that takes account of the implications for society, shaping both the content of the research and the way it is pursued. To achieve this dual goal of positive scientific and societal impact, we identify four particular dimensions of the research enterprise that philanthropies will need to advance: seeding new fields of research, broadening participation in science, fostering new institutional practices, and deepening links between science and society. If funders attend assiduously to all these dimensions, we hope that when people look back 75 years from now, science philanthropy will have fully realized its extraordinary potential…(More)”.

How behavioral science could get people back into public libraries

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Talib Visram: “In October, New York City’s three public library systems announced they would permanently drop fines on late book returns. Comprised of Brooklyn, Queens, and New York public libraries, the City’s system is the largest in the country to remove fines. It’s a reversal of a long-held policy intended to ensure shelves stayed stacked, but an outdated one that many major cities, including Chicago, San Francisco, and Dallas, had already scrapped without any discernible downsides. Though a source of revenue—in 2013, for instance, Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) racked up $1.9 million in late fees—the fee system also created a barrier to library access that disproportionately touched the low-income communities that most need the resources.

That’s just one thing Brooklyn’s library system has done to try to make its services more equitable. In 2017, well before the move to eliminate fines, BPL on its own embarked on a partnership with Nudge, a behavioral science lab at the University of West Virginia, to find ways to reduce barriers to access and increase engagement with the book collections. In the first-of-its-kind collaboration, the two tested behavioral science interventions via three separate pilots, all of which led to the library’s long-term implementation of successful techniques. Those involved in the project say the steps can be translated to other library systems, though it takes serious investment of time and resources….(More)”.

Design for Social Innovation: Case Studies from Around the World

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited By Mariana Amatullo, Bryan Boyer, Jennifer May and Andrew Shea: “The United Nations, Australia Post, and governments in the UK, Finland, Taiwan, France, Brazil, and Israel are just a few of the organizations and groups utilizing design to drive social change. Grounded by a global survey in sectors as diverse as public health, urban planning, economic development, education, humanitarian response, cultural heritage, and civil rights, Design for Social Innovation captures these stories and more through 45 richly illustrated case studies from six continents.

From advocating to understanding and everything in between, these cases demonstrate how designers shape new products, services, and systems while transforming organizations and supporting individual growth.

How is this work similar or different around the world? How are designers building sustainable business practices with this work? Why are organizations investing in design capabilities? What evidence do we have of impact by design? Leading practitioners and educators, brought together in seven dynamic roundtable discussions, provide context to the case studies.

Design for Social Innovation is a must-have for professionals, organizations, and educators in design, philanthropy, social innovation, and entrepreneurship. This book marks the first attempt to define the contours of a global overview that showcases the cultural, economic, and organizational levers propelling design for social innovation forward today…(More)”

Do Awards Incentivize Non-Winners to Work Harder on CSR?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Jiangyan Li, Juelin Yin, Wei Shi, And Xiwei Yi: “As corporate lists and awards that rank and recognize firms for superior social reputation have proliferated in recent years, the field of CSR is also replete with various types of awards given out to firms or CEOs, such as Fortune’s “Most Admired Companies” rankings and “Best 100 Companies to Work For” lists. Such awards serve to both reward and incentivize firms to become more dedicated to CSR. Prior research has primarily focused on the effects of awards on award-winning firms; however, the effectiveness and implications of such awards as incentives to non-winning firms remain understudied. Therefore, in the article of “Keeping up with the Joneses: Role of CSR Awards in Incentivizing Non-Winners’ CSR” published by Business & Society, we are curious about whether such CSR awards could successfully incentivize non-winning firms to catch up with their winning competitors.

Drawing on the awareness-motivation-capability (AMC) framework developed in the competitive dynamics literature, we use a sample of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2015 to investigate how competitors’ CSR award winning can influence focal firms’ CSR. The empirical results show that non-winning firms indeed improve their CSR after their competitors have won CSR awards. However, non-winning firms’ improvement in CSR may vary in different scenarios. For instance, media exposure can play an important informational role in reducing information asymmetries and inducing competitive actions among competitors, therefore, non-winning firms’ improvement in CSR is more salient when award-winning firms are more visible in the media. Meanwhile, when CSR award winners perform better financially, non-winners will be more motivated to respond to their competitors’ wins. Further, firms with a higher level of prior CSR are more capable of improving their CSR and therefore are more likely to respond to their competitors’ wins…(More)”.

We need to talk about techie tunnel vision

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Gillian Tett :”Last year, the powerful US data company Palantir filed documents for an initial public offering. Included was a remarkable letter to investors from Alex Karp, the CEO, that is worth remembering now.

“Our society has effectively outsourced the building of software that makes our world possible to a small group of engineers in an isolated corner of the country,” he wrote. “The question is whether we also want to outsource the adjudication of some of the most consequential moral and philosophical questions of our time.”

Karp added, “The engineering elite in Silicon Valley may know more than most about building software. But they do not know more about how society should be organized or what justice requires.” To put it more bluntly, techies might be brilliant and clever at what they do, but that doesn’t make them qualified to organise our lives. It was a striking statement from someone who is himself an ultra techie and whose company’s extensive military and intelligence links have sparked controversy…

The good news is that people in his position are finally prepared to talk about it. The even better news is that there are experiments under way to combat techie tunnel vision. In Silicon Valley, for instance, Big Tech companies are hiring social scientists. Other innovation hubs show promising signs too. In Canberra, Genevieve Bell, a former vice-president at Intel, has launched a blended social and computer science AI institute. These initiatives aim to blend AI with what I call “anthropological intelligence” — a second type of “AI” that provides a sense of social context.

The bad news is that such initiatives remain modest, and there is still extreme information asymmetry between the engineers and everyone else. What is needed is an army of cultural translators who will fight our tendency to mentally outsource the issues to engineering elites. Maybe tech innovators such as Karp and Schmidt could use some of their vast wealth to fund this….(More)”.

Under What Conditions Are Data Valuable for Development?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Dean Jolliffe et al: “Data produced by the public sector can have transformational impacts on development outcomes through better targeting of resources, improved service delivery, cost savings in policy implementation, increased accountability, and more. Around the world, the amount of data produced by the public sector is increasing at a rapid pace, yet their transformational impacts have not been realized fully. Why has the full value of these data not been realized yet? This paper outlines 12 conditions needed for the production and use of public sector data to generate value for development and presents case studies substantiating these conditions. The conditions are that data need to have adequate spatial and temporal coverage (are complete, frequent, and timely), are of high quality (are accurate, comparable, and granular), are easy to use (are accessible, understandable, and interoperable), and are safe to use (are impartial, confidential, and appropriate)…(More)”.

Evaluating the trade-off between privacy, public health safety, and digital security in a pandemic

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Titi Akinsanmi and Aishat Salami: “COVID-19 has impacted all aspects of everyday normalcy globally. During the height of the pandemic, people shared their (PI) with one goal—to protect themselves from contracting an “unknown and rapidly mutating” virus. The technologies (from applications based on mobile devices to online platforms) collect (with or without informed consent) large amounts of PI including location, travel, and personal health information. These were deployed to monitor, track, and control the spread of the virus. However, many of these measures encouraged the trade-off on privacy for safety. In this paper, we reexamine the nature of privacy through the lens of safety focused on the health sector, digital security, and what constitutes an infraction or otherwise of the privacy rights of individuals in a pandemic as experienced in the past 18 months. This paper makes a case for maintaining a balance between the benefit, which the contact tracing apps offer in the containment of COVID-19 with the need to ensure end-user privacy and data security. Specifically, it strengthens the case for designing with transparency and accountability measures and safeguards in place as critical to protecting the privacy and digital security of users—in the use, collection, and retention of user data. We recommend oversight measures to ensure compliance with the principles of lawful processing, knowing that these, among others, would ensure the integration of privacy by design principles even in unforeseen crises like an ongoing pandemic; entrench public trust and acceptance, and protect the digital security of people…(More)”.

Frontiers of inclusive innovation

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

UN-ESCAP: “Science, technology and innovation (STI) can increase the efficiency, effectiveness and impact of efforts to meet the ambitions of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The successful adoption of existing innovations has enabled many economies to sustain economic growth. Innovation can expand access to education and health-care services. Technologies, such as those supporting renewable energy, are also providing options for more environmentally sustainable development paths.

Nevertheless, STI have exacerbated inequalities and created new types of social divides and environmental hazards, establishing new and harder to cross frontiers between those that benefit and those that are excluded. In the context of increasing inequalities and a major pandemic, Governments need to look more seriously at harnessing STI for the Sustainable Development Goals and to leave no one behind. This may require shifting the focus from chasing frontier technologies to expanding the frontiers of innovation. Many promising technologies have already arrived. Economic growth does not have to be the only bottom line of innovation activities. Innovative business models are offering pathways that benefit society and the environment as well as the bottom line.

To maximize STI for inclusive and sustainable development, Governments need to intentionally expand the frontiers of innovation. STI policies must seek not just to explore emerging technologies, but, most importantly, to ensure that more citizens, enterprises and countries can benefit from such technologies and innovations.CH1

This report on Frontiers of Inclusive Innovation: Formulating technology and innovation policies that leave no one behind highlights the opportunities and challenges that policymakers and development partners have to expand the frontiers of inclusive innovation. When inclusion is the next frontier of technology, STI policies are designed differently.

They are designed with broader objectives than just economic growth, with social development and sustainable economies in mind; and they are inclusive in terms of aspiring to enable everyone to benefit from – and participate in – innovative activities.

Governments can add an inclusive lens to STI policies by considering the following questions:

   1. Do the overall aims of innovation policy involve more than economic growth? 

   2. Whose needs are being met?

   3. Who participates in innovation?

   4. Who sets priorities, and how are the outcomes of innovation managed?…(More)”

Giant, free index to world’s research papers released online

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Holly Else at Nature: “In a project that could unlock the world’s research papers for easier computerized analysis, an American technologist has released online a gigantic index of the words and short phrases contained in more than 100 million journal articles — including many paywalled papers.

The catalogue, which was released on 7 October and is free to use, holds tables of more than 355 billion words and sentence fragments listed next to the articles in which they appear. It is an effort to help scientists use software to glean insights from published work even if they have no legal access to the underlying papers, says its creator, Carl Malamud. He released the files under the auspices of Public Resource, a non-profit corporation in Sebastopol, California, that he founded.

Malamud says that because his index doesn’t contain the full text of articles, but only sentence snippets up to five words long, releasing it does not breach publishers’ copyright restrictions on the reuse of paywalled articles. However, one legal expert says that publishers might question the legality of how Malamud created the index in the first place.

Some researchers who have had early access to the index say it’s a major development in helping them to search the literature with software — a procedure known as text mining. Gitanjali Yadav, a computational biologist at the University of Cambridge, UK, who studies volatile organic compounds emitted by plants, says she aims to comb through Malamud’s index to produce analyses of the plant chemicals described in the world’s research papers. “There is no way for me — or anyone else — to experimentally analyse or measure the chemical fingerprint of each and every plant species on Earth. Much of the information we seek already exists, in published literature,” she says. But researchers are restricted by lack of access to many papers, Yadav adds….(More)”.

Has COVID-19 been the making of Open Science?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Lonni Besançon, Corentin Segalas and Clémence Leyrat: “Although many concepts fall under the umbrella of Open Science, some of its key concepts are: Open Access, Open Data, Open Source, and Open Peer Review. How far these four principles were embraced by researchers during the pandemic and where there is room for improvement, is what we, as early career researchers, set out to assess by looking at data on scientific articles published during the Covid-19 pandemic….Open Source and Open Data practices consist in making all the data and materials used to gather or analyse data available on relevant repositories. While we can find incredibly useful datasets shared publicly on COVID-19 (for instance those provided by the European Centre for Disease Control), they remain the exception rather than the norm. A spectacular example of this were the papers utilising data from the company Surgisphere, that led to retracted papers in The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine. In our paper, we highlight 4 papers that could have been retracted much earlier (and perhaps would never have been accepted) had the data been made accessible from the time of publication. As we argue in our paper, this presents a clear case for making open data and open source the default, with exceptions for privacy and safety. While some journals already have such policies, we go further in asking that, when data cannot be shared publicly, editors/publishers and authors/institutions should agree on a third party to check the existence and reliability/validity of the data and the results presented. This not only would strengthen the review process, but also enhance the reproducibility of research and further accelerate the production of new knowledge through data and code sharing…(More)”.