Social Science Space

UPDATED: The U.S. Senate committee that oversees funding for the National Science Foundation, and with that most of the federal money spent on basic social and behavioral science research, today approved a 2020 budget that increases NSF spending by $242 million compared to the current fiscal year. The bill must still pass the full Senate, and be reconciled with a more generous House version.

Showing impact is a question of timescales as well as metrics. If you invest in research you are likely to see success in high-quality research outputs such as publications, as the UK has demonstrated in the past couple of decades. But it’s harder to demonstrate innovation and it takes longer.

For this fifth article in the series of measuring impact, Louis Coiffait spoke to two leading UK experts who also know other countries; Dr Hamish McAlpine, head of knowledge exchange data and evidence at Research England, and Sean Fielding, director of innovation, impact and business at the University of Exeter, and also the chair of the UK national knowledge exchange association, PraxisAuril.

As details emerged on March 11 about the president’s fiscal year 2020 budget, it became increasingly clear that science funding would once again be targeted for significant spending cuts. But a new target also emerged – federal spending on education.

The two federal agencies that spend the most on making grants to social and behavioral science research in the United States, both have their budgets shaved by an eighth in the Fiscal Year 2020 budget proposal released by the Trump administration earlier this month. But the move is more symbolic than substantive.

The final agreement ending the most recent U.S. government shutdown provides $8.1 billion for the National Science Foundation, a $301 million increase over the amount appropriated in fiscal year 2018.

In this first in a series of articles about impact, Louis Coiffait will provide an overview of the current situation for researchers (including social scientists) in the United Kingdom, in particular looking at the impact and knowledge exchange frameworks.

Even if Congress and the president succeed in breaking the logjam and approve the remaining fiscal year 2019 appropriations bills, the new Congress will find itself significantly behind schedule in the fiscal year 2020 budget and appropriations cycle. The president’s budget, which is usually delivered to Congress in early February, will likely be delayed by a month, and perhaps longer if another partial shutdown occurs on February 16. House and Senate appropriations committees typically set deadlines for requests by this time in the year, but that process is not even close to starting because of the shutdown.

During this U.S government partial shutdown, agencies including the NSF, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the National Parks Service, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and NOAA have had to stop most work. Surely that can’t be beneficial …

The House and Senate failed to enact appropriations legislation to fund several federal departments and agencies, and, as a result, the federal government experienced a partial government shutdown effective December 22. But there has been some action – the Senate confirmed the nominations of Kelvin Droegemeier as director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Steven Dillingham as director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

The threat by Donald Trump to shutdown the U.S. federal government if he doesn’t see funding for a border wall could delay the 2019 budget for the National Science Foundation, a budget that is expected to include an increase in funding for NSF relative to the current year. Meanwhile, the president has named five new people to the National Science Board,.

When the National Science Foundation tabbed Arthur “Skip” Lupia to head its Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), it was making a statement whether it meant to or not. Lupia, officially the Hal R. Varian Collegiate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, has been one of social science’s ablest defenders — and occasional critics.