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Critical Metascience

A metascientist pushes back against the unified and idealized vision of science embodied in NSF’s new Office of Metascience.

In the biggest project RoRI has ever undertaken, a new 18-nation study maps the high-stakes rise and fragility of metascience

A metascientist pushes back against the unified and idealized vision of science embodied in NSF’s new Office of Metascience.

In the biggest project RoRI has ever undertaken, a new 18-nation study maps the high-stakes rise and fragility of metascience

To find evidence-backed ways to improve grant-funding processes, metascientists need freedom and money to experiment, as well as leaders who are willing to make change.

This working paper maps the emergence and contemporary landscape of metascience research across Africa to support African institutions in setting their own research-on-research agendas. Drawing on bibliometric and policy-uptake data from Dimensions and Overton (2000–2024) alongside historical analysis, the study evaluates funding sources, collaboration networks, and policy impact across nine research communities and fifteen distinct topics. It reveals critical structural dynamics, including a heavy dependence on international funding, intra-continental collaboration lagging behind global partnerships, diverse national priorities, and limited policy integration, underscoring the urgent imperative for autonomous, African-led research information infrastructures and governance models.

Metascience is moving into the mainstream. Its underlying premise – the need to turn the tools of science back towards understanding and improving the scientific system itself – is increasingly accepted and advocated for by governments, funding agencies and researchers themselves. In this report, we use metascience as an umbrella term for research and practice that examines how research is funded, organised, conducted, communicated, evaluated and used, and that seeks to improve these systems and practices. We do not treat metascience as a single discipline or fixed category. Nor are the issues just about this particular label. One of the central findings of the Meta-Moment project is that comparable activity is organised under different traditions and labels across countries. These agendas are not new. Metascience has deep roots and many branches, and builds on long-established communities in scientometrics, science and technology studies (STS), science policy and innovation studies (SPIS), science of science, higher education studies, and philosophy and history of science (Wilsdon et al., 2025). It also taps into a fast-growing community of researchers, policymakers and practitioners – in universities, funding agencies, private labs and foundations – who are deploying advanced methods to investigate and improve research systems, cultures and decision-making. In multiple countries, new initiatives and alliances are being set up to strengthen these activities. The project deployed a mix of methods to analyse the changing mix of institutions, investments and capabilities across eighteen national systems. This is the most comprehensive overview of national systems of metascience to date, helping governments, funders, and research organisations to better navigate and fulfil the potential of this metascientific moment.

Depends on what “it” we are trying to solve. If metascience is to go the distance, it needs a larger ambition than improving how we produce scientific knowledge.

Meta-Moment — mapping the metascience landscape: country evidence, the 131-topic discovery atlas, ecosystem, and collaboration analyses.