Thursday, August 12, 2010

NSF:SBE 2020 - Future Research in the Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences

NSF: SBE (National Science Foundation: Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences) invites individuals and groups to contribute white papers outlining grand challenge questions that are both foundational and transformative. More details are available here.

NSF: SBE expect these white papers to advance SBE’s mission to study human characteristics and human behaviors in its Social and Economic Sciences and Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences divisions, as well as to be the nation’s resource for understanding the structure and development of science through its Science Resources Statistics division.

White papers should address the following questions:

1. What is the fundamental question/questions? And why is this important? Explain the challenge question, capability to be created, or scientific strategy; provide context in terms of recent research results and standing questions in the field; and suggest the range of disciplines that may contribute.
2. What are the implications for advancing the domain? For building capacity? And for providing infrastructure? By “advancing the domain,” we mean the fundamental science; by “capacity” we mean education and training of graduate students, faculty, and systems of prestige, promotion, and recognition; and by “infrastructure”, we mean the shared data and systems that enable the research (e.g., large survey data sets, research centers, shared toolkits and so on).
3. Who is doing provocative research?
4. What other questions should SBE ask as responses are analyzed?

Respondents must answer (1) and (2); they are encouraged to answer (3) and (4). A white paper should have no more than 2,000 words, and should be submitted by September 30, 2010.

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