Weaving Data and Community

Maintaining the United States’ leadership in space requires discipline, continuity, and a clear division of responsibilities between government and industry.

The scientific community urgently needs to consider the longevity and resilience of open research infrastructure—when and why it might fail, what risks failures represent for the broader community, and how to prevent them.

As the federal government withdraws from public data collection, states cannot step into the breach without addressing common challenges and disparities.

Public values must shape governance and implementation of artificial intelligence.

Rather than haphazardly using artificial intelligence for research, scientists and decisionmakers should take a deliberative approach.

The story of feckless efforts to address spam in the early 2000s offers a cautionary tale for attempts to regulate artificial intelligence today.

An environmental knowledge commons could support evidence-based policymaking, but it will require long-term coordination across the many communities monitoring pollution and local conditions.

How a Wisconsin county realized that systems change requires shared sensemaking as much as innovative metrics.

To improve the relationship between science and the public, funders should embrace a new ontology of scientific work that aligns incentives with society’s goals.

Reforms to America’s seed fund should be a catalyst for policies that help more small businesses bring new technologies to market.

Despite their focus on institutional research excellence, US research universities are well down a path of eroding public value and research prowess. University leadership needs to shift attention from chasing prestige to crafting strategies for long-term success.

To respond to challenges in society, sustainability, and governance, universities must first deal with the mismatch between how knowledge is actually generated and what academia recognizes and teaches.