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by david_reinstein
1 min read4 answers 0

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AcademiaCollections and resourcesData on the EA communityLong-Term Future FundScott Alexander
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Context

I'm working to build supporters and 'founding committee' for an 'Unjournal' ... funding journal-independent peer review, evaluation, and rating of projects and papers relevant to global priorities and EA. We'll have an initial focus on empirical work and on social science/econ/impact evaluation. And we have some funding now, thanks to the LTFF (and ACX)!

See:

  1. Looking to gain credible supporters and feedback, and build a 'founding committee' to set up rules and get things rolling,
  2. Scoping the potential coverage of the unjournal, and potential audiences and interested reviewers and editor-esque managers
  3. Looking for 'key examples of relevant research projects/papers', including projects to use as test-cases

Looking for lists (and suggestions)

I was going to build an Airtable/database for linked lists like...

  • Researchers/academics who have spoken at EA conferences
  • ... or who have affiliations with EA orgs or who are known to be
  • EA-adjacent open-science advocates and publication innovators
  • Academic research groups doing EA-adjacent work

But before I get started, maybe there are some existing lists. I'll compile whatever is shared with me, and probably use it as input to an Airtable (with acknowledged sources, obviously)

Additional note/suggestions

I'll soon put out a more prominent 'call for interest, applications, nominations, and suggestions' for both members of the founding/managing committee and for projects/papers to start with. ... But I welcome suggestions now too.

I also may put a 'bounty' on this (rewards for accepted suggestions) ... which will, of course, be retroactive if it happens.

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freedomandutility

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Effective Thesis have something close to this.

david_reinstein1
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Good point! I should have thought of that.

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Jaime Sevilla

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I'll share with you one such list privately.

One note of caution: there are some important data privacy concerns here. A public list like this could be used to spam or harass researchers. Asking for researcher permission to include their name and information and a mechanism for people to opt out later seems important.

david_reinstein1
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Thanks. Do you see a particular vector or case where harassment might be a risk? I’m thinking that for a list of “researchers who do work on global priorities” or “researchers who have spoken at EA global conference” this is akin to existing public lists of researchers by field and this not a big threat.

If instead this was a list reflecting, e.g., deeply personal views or political affiliations it could be more problematic.

And you are right that we should notify people who are on the list and allow them to ask to have their names removed.

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Jaime Sevilla
There is precedence for episodes of harassment in the community [1]. One motivated and misguided individual could use this list to conduct more harassment in the future.  There is also precedence for scams directed at academics - I remember distinctly one such scam where one of my colleague's account was spoofed and they tried to scam money out of me.  Overall I agree that this is less risky than a list of people who share a particular belief, and as risky as other public lists of scientists by field. But I think this these previous lists are also iffy and maybe should be more private. There are some lists circulating in the community which are not public but are free to be shared privately. I think this is a good model to imitate, where people interested in accessing the database could reach out to you for access, stating their purpose in the process. 1. ^ I will not enter in details
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david_reinstein
Thanks. I'll be careful about this. In principle, there is no reason I would need to make this list public. Perhaps a 'by-invitation Airtable' would be a good compromise.?

Question Mark

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There was this post that is a list of EA-related organizations. The org update tag also has a list of EA organizations. Nuño Sempere also wrote this list of evaluations of various longtermist EA organizations. As for specific individuals, Wikipedia has a category for people associated with Effective Altruism.

david_reinstein1
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Some good content there, but I was looking specifically for researchers/academics for this particular case.

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ryancbriggs

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One additional useful starting point might be to look through EA funds grants to see find researchers that won. For example, in this batch I won one (and would be interested in chatting about your journal ideas whenever), as did Theron Pummer and it looks like a few other academics. These aren't nicely formatted lists, but they shouldn't be too hard to skim through. Someone over there might also be willing and able to make a list for you, as they presumably track all this in some database software.

So-Low Growth2
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Nice suggestion - and good to see you here on the EAF Ryan!

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david_reinstein2
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Good idea. It's not all academics/researchers, but that's a good chunk of it.

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