Seems to me that a better thing to do would be to (a) pick the topic that you want, (b) pick the dollar amount you are willing to spend on some research on that topic, and (c) advertise a paper prize funded at that amount.
Then you get potentially a lot of good research on the topic from lots of different perspectives.
Even better if you can find either a sympathetic editor of a good technical journal that does special editions (I would have suggested Synthese, but some recent political nonsense has probably decreased their value) or make a deal with an academic press to publish the best eight or ten papers together. Alternatively, you give out the award and then release the copyright back to the authors with some comments and encouragement to publish in visible journals.
Yes, that is possible. I suspect, though, that many good, motivated researchers would be overlooked by more targeted approaches. Partly that is just because targeting one researcher necessarily excludes all other researchers. Partly it is because not every good, interested researcher has a lot of name-recognition. Also, a paper prize need not target a single academic discipline, and since the topics at issue are interdisciplinary, advertising a paper prize across philosophy, computer science, statistics, economics, psychology, etc. seems like a good idea to me.
But perhaps a better answer is to do a bit of both? SI could take a $20k investment and split it to do an experimental comparison. I, for one, would like to see an experimental comparison of the quality and quantity of research produced by a $10k focused grant and a $10k paper prize.
Seems to me that a better thing to do would be to (a) pick the topic that you want, (b) pick the dollar amount you are willing to spend on some research on that topic, and (c) advertise a paper prize funded at that amount.
Then you get potentially a lot of good research on the topic from lots of different perspectives.
Even better if you can find either a sympathetic editor of a good technical journal that does special editions (I would have suggested Synthese, but some recent political nonsense has probably decreased their value) or make a deal with an academic press to publish the best eight or ten papers together. Alternatively, you give out the award and then release the copyright back to the authors with some comments and encouragement to publish in visible journals.
You might do better with one very good researcher that you choose rather getting contributions from whoever is willing to work on spec.
Yes, that is possible. I suspect, though, that many good, motivated researchers would be overlooked by more targeted approaches. Partly that is just because targeting one researcher necessarily excludes all other researchers. Partly it is because not every good, interested researcher has a lot of name-recognition. Also, a paper prize need not target a single academic discipline, and since the topics at issue are interdisciplinary, advertising a paper prize across philosophy, computer science, statistics, economics, psychology, etc. seems like a good idea to me.
But perhaps a better answer is to do a bit of both? SI could take a $20k investment and split it to do an experimental comparison. I, for one, would like to see an experimental comparison of the quality and quantity of research produced by a $10k focused grant and a $10k paper prize.