Collaboration Policy

After a successful pilot, New Things Under the Sun is beta testing collaborations! If you would like to coauthor an article with me for this site, please send a short proposal to [email protected]. Proposals should be about a narrowly defined topic area related to innovation or science, for which there is recent academic literature we can synthesize, as well as a short reading list. I’m particularly interested in proposals related to literatures I haven’t covered well on this site. I imagine most collaborators will be social science PhDs and graduate students, but I’ll consider uncredentialed experts as well.

I expect my process will evolve with experience, but for now I expect something like the following:

1. We will meet via zoom to discuss the idea and split up an initial reading list.

2. We’ll iterate on reading the literature and drawing up an outline

3. You’ll write a first draft

4. We’ll iterate on revising the draft

5. I’ll publish the draft on this website and the newsletter, and record a podcast version, with both of us listed as coauthors

6. I will have the responsibility for maintaining the article as the academic literature evolves (though I would certainly welcome you remaining involved!)

I expect steps #1-#5 of this process to play out over months, as I will be working on collaborations in parallel with other posts.

An important point is that these are collaborations; I’m not seeking guest posts at this time. I view part of my job as being able to draw connections between different parts of this literature, and so it’s important to me that I’ve actually read all the papers discussed in detail on this site, including the papers we’ll write about in our article.

At this stage I cannot compensate coauthors. Note also that collaborations are a large time commitment for me, and so I expect to be selective in which ones I take on. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me!

Going Beyond Coauthorship

Lastly, if instead of coauthorship, you are interested in launching your own living literature review you should consider reaching out to me to see if financial support for such a project is feasible. At this time, I’m inviting proposals from people with PhDs related to the topic they’re proposing to cover, and I’m particularly interested in living literature reviews on a neglected topics that are relevant for policy-making.