SInnoPSis- E R A Chair in Science and Innovation Policy & Studies

We have published a paper in the International Journal of Biometeorology: "Thermal indices for assessing the impact of outdoor thermal environments on human health: a systematic review of epidemiological studies." It is uncommon for economists to publish in meteorology journals, but the SInnoPSis project offered opportunities for unique collaboration.

The study was supported by the internal SINGRAFICO grant and brought together researchers from the Medical School and the Institute for Environmental Research with SInnoPSis economists and psychologists. The common language was the meta-analytic approach. The review covers over 300 studies across 51 countries, examining how thermal indices—such as Apparent Temperature and Heat Index—relate to morbidity and mortality.

It was a unique experience in genuinely interdisciplinary collaboration for all of the contributors!

ERA chair holder Zacharias Maniadis presented at the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Decision, Experience, and Behavior seminar, with a great set of attendees and very valuable comments! Special thanks to Ido Erev and Yefim Roth for their hospitality!

We study the 'Identify the Expert' problem, with Sotirios Georganas, Aris Boukouras, and Theodore Alysandratos, with implications for democracy and markets. Across a series of conditions and environments, people fail to choose a true expert in economic matters against a populist, who predicts and proposes what people want to hear!

Prof. Zacharias Maniadis People Fail to Distinguish Between Experts and Non-Experts People Fail to Distinguish Between Experts and Non-Experts in a Simple Online EnvironmentAbstract: Consider a debate with two speakers on a major issue. How ...

The SInnoPSis group, enlarged by the presence of Pablo Sanchez Nunez, will remain active at UCY and produce frontier research. Twenty-four publications and forty research presentations for our group, and counting! Special thanks also to our past member Adrien Fillon for his great contributions to the team! We will forever be grateful to Twin4merit project and iRISE project for their support!

We have argued before that meta-research, the quantitative study of science itself, could greatly benefit from economic methods, including experimental ones.
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.2001846

Is open peer review a good idea? In our new experimental paper with Lunzheng Li, Philippos Louis and Dimitrios Xefteris we examine the role of reciprocity in Peer Assessment. We find that reciprocal gift-giving may distort the peer assessment process. The key to our design is that assessed 'performance' is experimentally controlled to be uniform in the set {0,1,2,3,4,5}.
https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucy/cypeua/06-2024.html

As shown in the graph, we find that those who assess others, expecting to be assessed back by the same person, disproportionally assign positive reviews, grossly deviating from the uniform distribution. This is a possible point of caution for proponents of Open Peer Review.

Is the modern publication system serving the interests of society, especially in the era of Open Science? Members of the SInnoPSis team (along with Eva Méndez and Pablo Sanchez Nunez) have produced a recent open paper expressing concerns for possible hijacking of the Open Science movement by strong interests.

In our forthcoming SinnoPSis podcast next week, we shall discuss with Paolo Crosetto and his research team on scientific publishing and its discontents. Looking forward to it!

https://open-research-europe.ec.europa.eu/articles/4-127/v1?src=rss

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/science-of-doing-science/id1677623001

Open Research Europe Article: Should we be wary of the role of scientific publishers in Open Science?. Read the latest article version by Adrien Fillon, Zacharias Maniadis, Eva Méndez, Pablo Sánchez-Núñez, at Open Research Europe.

It was a very productive week in Berlin for our ERA chair Zacharias Maniadis!

They enjoyed excellent presentations (especially methodological ones) at the first Leibniz Open Science Day 2024.
https://www.zbw.eu/de/ueber-uns/veranstaltungen/leibniz-open-science-day

It was also a pleasure to interact and discuss our process on the project iRISE with the center of excellence in meta-research QUEST at Charite!
https://www.bihealth.org/en/translation/innovation-enabler/quest-center
https://www.irise-project.eu/

Finally, Berlin School of Economics offers unique opportunities for interaction with local researchers. Given the great Experimental Economics tradition of the region, visiting it was a real treat!

https://www.wzb.eu/en/node/488/subpage/69590

SInnoPSis group studies the relationship of Social Sciences with Meta-Research. Two scientific pillars of this are:

1) The use of economic modelling to understand science
2) The use of Meta-Research tools in Social Science

Next week in Berlin our research will be presented. On Monday 25th of December Zacharias Maniadis will present ''A meta-analysis on the effect of transparency on the efficacy of nudges'' at the Leibniz Open Science Day 2024.

On Thursday November 28th, he will present ''How can economic theory inform meta-research?'' at BIH QUEST Center for Reproducible Research.

Twin4merit is organizing an exciting summer school for Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου | University Of Cyprus scholars and managers. Our ERA chair holder Zacharias Maniadis delivered two interesting lectures about Research Assessment and Experimental Methods in the Social Sciences. Great collaboration among the two projects!
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The second day of our SInnoPSis- E R A Chair in Science and Innovation Policy & Studies /Twin4meritconference exceeded our expectations! Our first session evolved in a very active and informative debate on the merits of scientometrics and how the CoARA agreement is likely to inform research assessment! What a set of illuminating talks by John PA Ioannidis, Giovanni Abramo, Alex Rushforth and Marios Demetriades!

The active debate continued during our lively roundtable. Some key arguments expressed for future consideration: 1) The need to further institutionalize scientometrics 2) The need to expand the supply of metrics experts 3) The more active role such experts could play in research assessment reform movements 4) The insufficient attention that Cypriot politicians play to experts in Research Policy.

An exciting fist day of our interdisciplinary SInnoPSis- E R A Chair in Science and Innovation Policy & Studies / Twin4merit conference! Elizabeth Gadd, Gunnar Sivertsen and Eva Méndez shared perspectives on the problems of research assessment and the needs for reform. Marco Ottaviani and Nectaria Glynia illustrated how economic tools can be used to understand science, and thus to examine the potential consequences of such reform. Finally, Erin Hengel, Mattias Nielsen and Alexia Panayiotou examined assessment reform from the diversity point of view.

Looking forward to the second day and our debate about CoARA and research assessment!