FAQ

A project is usually started by a group of people who are then assumed to be the main players moving forward.
That is not the case here. We are a small group of junior researchers kick-starting the project at the moment, but it is our hope that other academic professionals will get involved and together we will bring the project to its success.
Therefore, the answer is possibly you, if you so desire. Email us at info@forasmarterscience.com if you want to help.

This project was not imposed on us by any external agent. It starts from our own will to make a positive change in the academic world.

You can find the publication record of this project’s founder here.

The end goal of the project is to produce a set of guidelines for academic institutions and funding agencies worldwide to follow in the foreseeable future.

For that to happen, we need:
1) to get together the relevant experts in the field to produce the guidelines.
2) a worldwide campaign to support and give visibility to the idea.

The conference is set to achieve the first goal.

The #ForaSmarterScience initiative is born to achieve the second.

Yes, one example is the agreement on a common deadline for postdoc offers within our field: http://insti.physics.sunysb.edu/itp/postdoc-agreement.html

The goal of this project is ambitious enough. A single conference cannot change the way Science is done in all institutions all around the world.

The project is based on the belief that through this particular subfield, new insights on modern academia can spread to all of Science. Making a change in a small sector can be inspiring enough for further initiatives to appear in the future in many other fields.

The location of the conference will be a decision to be made jointly by those who eventually are actively involved in the project.

A preliminary choice is Reykjavík, Iceland. This is the place for which a case study has been done so far, ascertaining viability and budget estimation.

The date of the conference is not confirmed. A preliminary choice is Summer 2021, but delays can occur, depending mainly on the time needed to allocate the necessary funding, and future pandemic outbreaks.

No, under no circumstances will this become an online event.

Practical details such as room reservations, coffee breaks, social program, expense reimbursements… will be taken care of by a Professional Conference Organizer (PCO) company.

In order to ascertain the feasibility of such a plan, we made a case study for a conference of 120 participants taking place in Iceland in Summer 2021. Under this assumption, we consolidated the help of Reykjavik’s convention bureau, MeetInReykjavik, and obtained a non-binding budget estimate from the leading PCO in the country, Iceland Travel.

If the conference ends up taking place at another location, we will contact similar organizations at the local level.

The scientific part of the conference’s organization (selection of speakers, topics, agenda…), will be taken care of by the academic professionals who wish to join this project’s team of organizers.

There will be two lists of supporters of very different nature.

• List of benefactors – Anyone who makes a donation is welcome to appear in it, regardless of their scientific background.
• List of academic supporters – Only researchers with an established record of serious publications in peer-reviewed journals of the relevant fields can appear in this list if they so desire, regardless of the extent of their economic donation.

Follow the timeline of events at our Timeline to track the progress of this project and judge for yourself its likelihood of success.

The crowdsourcing campaign behind this project is supervised by the American public benefit corporation Kickstarter, that was behind campaigns such as the Pebble Time smartwatch and the 3Doodler 3D pen.

For a list of questions about their accountability, see here.

No, when you donate to our Kickstarter project, you are not paying for your participation in the conference. You are contributing to raise funds so that the conference can happen. The participants will be researchers from the fields of Theoretical High Energy Physics and Sociology of Science. Speakers will be carefully selected and have their travel and accommodation expenses reimbursed. For all other accepted participants, there will be no participation fee.

Much further ahead in the timeline of this project, once the conference is finally under way, a registration link will be posted in this site and announced through our newsletter.

No, this budget is the result of a careful study carried out independently by two Professional Conference Organizers in Reykjavík: Iceland Travel and G-events. We picked the number provided by the first, but the amounts were similar.

The description given was a full 5-day event in one conference venue, with 30 paid speakers, along with between 100 and 200 participants, no registration fee, and a social program for one evening. See the detailed summary of this draft here. Nevertheless, despite the details that went into obtaining this number, it should still be understood as an estimate, subject to possible changes, in case the event is relocated or anything else needs to be modified.

This was already attempted. Applications were written for two European funding agencies, and were promptly rejected, mainly for the simple reason that what we are proposing will not be a scientific conference.

To our knowledge, within our scientific system there is no funding allocated to support movements whose goal is to change the system itself. Upon this realization, it made sense to us that scientists themselves should be the ones providing the support necessary. It should be our common will the one that brings about this initiative. It should not come imposed by a fringe minority.

Then we would understand that the scientific community has declared there is no need for any change, that all is well in the way we are making progress and funding our research. Therefore, there would be no need for a conference and the event would be cancelled, returning the money to its owners.

Kickstarter works on an “all or nothing” basis. The platform will not charge you unless the project reaches its goal. For a list of their frequently asked questions, see here.

Certainly. Your institution would appear as one of the organizing institutions, just like in any other conference you may have helped organize.

Email us at info@forasmarterscience.com for the administrative details.

If you are a non-sciency person, you can

• Make a personal donation.
• Join the movement in social media.

If you are a researcher on an unrelated field of Science, you can

• Make a personal donation.
• Join the movement in social media.
• Contribute writing a blog post for this site.

If you are a young researcher in either Theoretical High Energy Physics or Sociology of Science, you can

• Make a personal donation.
• Join the movement in social media.
• Contribute writing a blog post for this site.
• Get actively involved in the organization.

If you are a senior researcher in either Theoretical High Energy Physics or Sociology of Science, you can

• Make a personal donation.
• Join the movement in social media.
• Contribute writing a blog post for this site.
• Get actively involved in the organization.
• Appear in our list of academic supporters by emailing us at info@forasmarterscience.com.
• Make your institution one of the organizing bodies and provide funding for the event.