2023 End of Year Update
Published on December 15, 2023 by Nicholas Coles
Dear collaborators and contributors to the Psychological Science Accelerator,
You are receiving an automated copy of this end-of-year update because you have either (1) directly contributed or made a payment to the Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA), or (2) signed up to attend the 2023 Big Team Science Conference, which was co-organized by the PSA.
As the year comes to a close, I am thrilled to share some updates on what the PSA has accomplished, how we have used our funds, and future directions.
Accomplishments (and the challenges we've navigated!)
2023 was another big year for the PSA. We put a close to an extremely ambitious set of studies on COVID-19 by publishing a paper describing the final openly-available dataset. We published several commentaries summarizing challenges we have faced along the way, including one focused on big team science authorship and one that more generally serves as a how-to guide for other researchers interested in big team science. We continued work on several ongoing research projects, including one focused on creating a large multilingual database of semantic priming values and several focused on John Templeton Foundation research priorities. We moved the hosting of our [always in-progress] website to the more open-science-friendly Github platform. Last, along with the ManyBabies, ManyPrimates, and ManyDogs consortia, we organized the second annual Big Team Science Conference, which had over 450 registrants and raised over $2,800 USD – nearly doubling the revenue of last year’s conference!
Funding
In 2022, we entered into a fiscal sponsorship agreement with the Open Collective Foundation (link here). In 2023, we got to witness how their platform more efficiently allowed us to (a) accept contributions in a tax-exempt manner, (b) create invoices and accept gifts, (c) distribute funds, (d) set up project-specific funding pages, (e) seamlessly adjust administrative privileges as changes in leadership occur, and (f) manage our finances in a transparent manner. Everybody can see how the PSA spent money by going to our Open Collective Foundation page, but here are the highlights:
1. Thanks to a generous award from the Einstein Foundation, we were able for the first time ever to give committees a modest operational budget ($2,500)! So far, committees have used these funds to offer financial support to people helping the PSA fulfill it's mission to improve psychology!
2. We continued to distribute funds to teams working on one of the largest-ever investigation of stereotype threat.
3. We continued to provide coverage for operational costs, including a listserv with over 2,500 subscribers!
Plans for 2024
In early 2022, the PSA Board of Directors finalized a 3-year vision plan based on feedback from the PSA network. The Board of Directors has proven to be extremely agile in their strategizing, but this vision plan continues to serve as an extremely useful guide! Stay tuned for more progress on our ongoing research projects, continued updates to our website, and the third annual Big Team Science Conference!
Thank you
Much like our goal to improve psychology, the goal to improve science in general requires a big team effort. Thank you to everybody who has collaborated and/or supported the PSA over the past year—and for being part of the collective effort to improve the rigor of science.
Warm regards,
Nicholas Coles
Director | Psychological Science Accelerator