The global project of interactive and predictive interdisciplinary mapping of Research, known as REVUER, cf. www.revuer.org and previously introduced in this blog, cf. Discover, Predict, Reproduce… Science, On the REVUER project, toward a ‘General Predictability’ and Know the Future, requires well crafted organization and financing as shown by reactions from mostly US and European Research executives so far.
REVUER mapping of Research, from projects to results, stem from its visualizing power for users ranging from researchers themselves to their ‘funders’ and to potential markets.
From there we plan to exploit at REVUER novel, and even still mostly in progress research fields representation models to show and/or compute fields trends and trajectories toward future results, effects or and even technologies.
The ultimate goal of i/REVUER’s “General predictability” potential capability, naturally deriving from long term targeted effective interdisciplinary and integrative mapping framework, once projected into effectively interacting models, as summarized in other blog pages, will come into perspective once and where sufficiently dense, evolving and .complementary fields are already mapped and tested.
REVUER comes amid an evolution of research communication and practices to make them more efficiently shared, starting with scientific data as led by the Research Data Alliance (RDA), cf. https://www.rd-alliance.org and getting toward easier access to publications.
The risk of non-optimal organizational framework for such endeavors has resulted in RDA initial 3 rules : ‘non-governmental‘, ‘non-profit‘ and ‘non-disciplinary‘, while in science-fiction it had drove I. Asimov to the choice of 2 foundations, at two edges of the galaxy.
Without going that far, the fact that the intersection of the three spaces, defined by the 3 rules, is close to empty space, has led REVUER to the organizational choices below.
Multi-regional and even national organization focused on independence
The REVUER consortium is driven by Re-Vuer Co, an US, MD based entity and meant to gather users, teams, groups as well as potential partners from the scientific world, i.e. from universities, institutes, agencies and foundations to publishers and networks.
Discussions have started with executives from some major universities and institutes in the US and in Europe and to some extent also in Asia. From there, and from organizational previous studies we have concluded that, once operational conditions are gathered, REVUER should become based in each region of the world and in some cases even per country, with their own hubs and license.
Strict independence is compulsory for REVUER for reasons too long and cumbersome to detail here but for its demanding, consistent and global experimental protocol.
The ‘non-profit’ issue is then taken less as a constraint than a guideline as conditions above require the Consortium to ensure sustainable revenues, to warrant independence.
Hence the rules summarized below and going to be further detailed in future blog pages.
More about universality, hence autonomy, for the sake of the epistemological protocol
Recall that our foremost scientific, or more precisely epistemological, experimental goal, requires that the real dynamics of research fields be as faithfully reflected as possible, indeed with limited “governmental”, “for-profit” and “disciplinary” distortions, and yet enabling and acknowledging the role of each of these types, such as research funding agencies, foundations, publishers, universities and all kinds of domain and field subsets.
This sufficiently summarizes REVUER’s operational or equivalently “business” model, which enables its users to define and parameterize extensively what they want to share and communicate most efficiently, to, how and with whom, through the common displaying screenplays for which n/REVUER is going to replace ex/REVUER.
The related commitment to users is that REVUER shares no interest with any specific business and dedicates entirely to its users, primarily researchers, whose goals and value it focuses on and primarily cares to promote.
Observe, however, that i) non-profitability alone is neither the entire solution, and moreover nor enough a warrant for users and ii) interactions with institutions and with actors, such as publishers and scientific societies and networks, are needed: here the retained solution is to involve, enable and let users and researchers choose from all.
Intellectual Property (IP) management
REVUER users are invited to cite appropriately content sources, unless these are their own and may be anonymous. Conversely REVUER will bring a growing number of novel ways to interweave hierarchies of contents, goals and trajectories with oriented maps and paths.
We expect that this will both help preserve, identify, optimize and feed back IP rights, then much better acknowledged, categorized and related, but above all will facilitate users’ identification of potential links, through which they could further develop their IP.
Moreover current IP is not directly involved by REVUER since its metadata, mostly quantitative, hence don’t tell about the ‘how’ an experiment, or process or even model, delivers the ‘critical’ effect or measure that it displays.
Both free and subscription based
The mechanism ensuring the independence/focus couple, required to activate, maintain and preserve so ambitious a valid long term experimental protocol, combines free access to first level results, to low cost subscriptions for more sophisticated computations.
Again our commitment to users and to external partners combines openness, equality, none or low costs, extended flexibility and free parameterizing so that researchers and related entities may all get as much as possible what they need to maximize exposure for what and to whom they want to see impacts on research fields and their evolution.
Conclusion for Value Organization and Financing cycle
The goal is clear: invite Researchers, as soon as students, to try, taste and like a novel, postulated most efficient manner to make their projects and results easily grasped and positioned by anyone potentially, directly or indirectly impacted.
One of them did summarize his viewpoint once as “what’s in for me” although younger ones had more rapidly embraced the potential at conferences at both Orlando and San Diego edges of the US with a “I could pay to use it“.
As a recall the main value offered to them is a kind of marketing benchmark, under their full control, through which they could expect to retrieve wide traction and hopefully maximize funding and partnering opportunities as well as impact factor for them and for the journals to which these will direct all kinds of watchers and potential readers.
So this is it, a future framework should enable all of them to get into it at will and, assuming they effectively contribute, get credits from which they can get shares of the national or regional place, or get some specific added values from those rather eager to monetize their contributing pieces or from funders portfolios, publishers’ and other providers’ products or services.
It is planned that these shares be over time transferable to those institutions with proven track record in carrying and developing knowledge across centuries: the universities, whether through donations or by acquisition from their foundations or other manners.
This does not fully solve the initial financing, although sponsoring and donations are anticipated, but at least explains the Exit strategy and commitment and paves the way to the sustainable and independent model required for the successive phases of 1) dissemination and sharing of most simple path, 2) increasing visualization and simulation feed back where and when the fields contents and dynamics allow it and 3) interdisciplinary growing experimentation where and when fields of fields allow it.
Conclusion
This organization should fit the goal of motivating users, to begin with researchers, well empowered to maximize benefits and minimize risks, burden and costs, reduced to low, even as compared to usual journals and conferences fees, or even to none.
It even appears optimal, and therefore to command the schedule of next steps and phases for the next decade, but is today very much open to critique and suggestions toward the purpose of gathering, organizing, sharing and then integrating the kind of metadata from which efficient hence most disseminated knowledge mapping and predictions are tested.
Comprehensive Universe 