Many paths: "As-you-go"-publication system [Grant proposal]

To improve the way in which research is currently conducted and communicated, Hartgerink and van Zelst (2018) have recently suggested a new research communication infrastructure. In their vision, research output is communicated continuously “as-you-go” as opposed to the current system where research is only communicated after the entire cycle has been completed (i.e., “after-the-fact”). This “as-you-go” system offers a host of advantages, including more transparency and a more rapid dissemination of research output. To examine the viability of their system, I aim to build a functioning implementation of their proposed infrastructure to investigate the research question “Does power corrupt?”
Specifically, in this application I propose the Many Paths model, which starts with one research question and allows an emergent process to occur thereafter. Given that results are often path dependent and many paths can be taken in a research process, it is worthwhile to study which what paths a research project initiated, pruned, and merged.
The Many Paths model offers insight into how researchers from different disciplines approach and study the same research question in a different way, and how that may relate to different conclusions being reached. As such, the project offers insight into the value of the “as-you-go” form of research communication. Furthermore, by inviting researchers from various disciplines to collaboratively address the question “Does power corrupt?” the Many Paths project offers a collaborative and integrated approach to that age-old question.
The funding will be used primarily to set up the communication infrastructure that will allow the emergent collaborative project in the form of Many Paths to happen. Here, researchers communicate each step of the research process directly after it occurred, thereby linking each step to a previous one. This structure allows for the paths of the research process to be investigated. Moreover, the “as-you-go”-communication infrastructure allows collaborators to prune their own research progress into different areas, as they observe and get inspired by the other collaborators. The remainder of the funding will be used for a data scientist to analyze the paths via which researchers communicate on the Many Paths project, to support data collection (if needed) and for organizing meetings on the project.