National Bureau of Economic Research
NBER: Long-Term Planning Process at NSF

Long-Term Planning Process at NSF

From: James Poterba <poterba_at_nber.org>
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 14:38:28 -0400

Dear NBER Researchers -
I am attaching a message from Dr. Myron Gutmann, the Assistant Director
of the SBE Directorate at NSF, requesting input for NSF's long-term
planning process. If you have suggestions regarding the most promising
avenues for future research in economics and allied fields, I would urge
you to respond to this request. All best wishes.
Jim

NSF 10-069
Dear Colleague Letter for SBE 2020: Future Research in the Social,
Behavioral & Economic Sciences
http://www.nsf.gov/images/greenline.jpg

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the social,
behavioral, and economic sciences face extraordinary opportunities to
address next-generation research challenges. The landscape is vast and
complex, stretching across temporal and spatial dimensions and multiple
levels of analysis -- from studying the human brain to implications of
decision making in a dynamic and fragmented yet interconnected world. As
we look forward 10 or even 20 years, the Directorate for the Social,
Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation
(NSF/SBE) seeks to frame innovative research for the year 2020 and
beyond that enhances fundamental knowledge and benefits society in many
ways.

This request is part of a process that will help NSF/SBE make plans to
support future research. Other activities will include a report by the
Directorate’s Advisory Committee about the grand challenges facing the
SBE sciences over the next decade and recommendations from the
Directorate’s staff. The insights resulting from this process are
threefold: They will inform the substance of future research, the
capacities to pursue that research, and the infrastructure to enable
investigations that will be increasingly interdisciplinary and
international and will involve multiple perspectives and intellectual
frameworks, differing scales and contexts, and diverse approaches and
methodologies.

As a first step in engaging its community, NSF/SBE invites individuals
and groups to contribute white papers outlining grand challenge
questions that are both foundational and transformative. They are
foundational in the sense that they reflect deep issues that engage
fundamental assumptions behind disciplinary research traditions and are
transformative because they seek to leverage current findings to unlock
a new cycle of research. We 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. These white papers must:

    * 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; suggest the range of
      disciplines that may contribute, and indicate the implications for
      future research within and across disciplines.
    * Limit the white paper to 2,000 words with a 200-word maximum
      abstract and up to 3 references to relevant readings.
    * Include a Creative Commons /Attribution Non-Commercial Share
      Alike/ license
      (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/) so that the material
      may be made widely available through the web.
    * Arrive by September 30, 2010 in a Microsoft Word-compatible
      format. Submit to:
      http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/.

NSF/SBE plans to use these contributions over the next year to assist in
formulating plans that will guide its strategic scientific thinking.
Consequently, we anticipate making all abstracts and papers accessible
through the SBE 2020 website. Authors who do not wish to have their
papers made available through the website may restrict access to NSF
staff. However, the author(s), title, and abstract will be included in
the publicly accessible corpus.
Research is cumulative and progress is at times necessarily incremental.
We invite you, now, to step outside of present demands and to think
boldly about future promises. We await your contributions to
understanding the future of SBE science.

Sincerely,

Myron Gutmann
Assistant Director
Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences
National Science Foundation
e-mail: mgutmann_at_nsf.gov <mailto:mgutmann_at_nsf.gov>
Phone: 703-292-8700
Received on Wed Aug 11 2010 - 14:38:28 EDT