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We propose a funding scheme for theoretical research that does not rely on project proposals, but on recent past scientific productivity. Given a quantitative figure of merit on the latter and the total research budget, we introduce a number of policies to decide the allocation of funds in each grant call. Under some assumptions on scientific productivity, some of such policies are shown to converge, in the limit of many grant calls, to a funding configuration that is close to the maximum total productivity of the whole scientific community. We present numerical simulations showing evidence that these schemes would also perform well in the presence of statistical noise in the scientific productivity and/or its evaluation. Finally, we prove that one of our policies cannot be cheated by individual research units. Our work must be understood as a first step towards a mathematical theory of the research activity.
As a part of science of science (SciSci) research, the evolution of scientific disciplines has been attracting a great deal of attention recently. This kind of discipline level analysis not only give insights of one particular field but also shed lig
The terrain that theorists cover in this CMB golden age is described. We ponder early universe physics in quest of the fluctuation generator. We extoll the virtues of inflation and defects. We transport fields, matter and radiation into the linear (p
The seasonal and variable electricity production of renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, needs to be compensated by resources that can guarantee a reliable supply of power at all times. As the penetration of variable renewable energy incr
We investigate the dynamics of a broad class of stochastic copying processes on a network that includes examples from population genetics (spatially-structured Wright-Fisher models), ecology (Hubbell-type models), linguistics (the utterance selection
The data underlying scientific papers should be accessible to researchers both now and in the future, but how best can we ensure that these data are available? Here we examine the effectiveness of four approaches to data archiving: no stated archivin