NSF–UKRI metascience statement

The United States National Science Foundation (NSF) and United Kingdom Research and Innovation (UKRI) have long advanced knowledge through the ingenuity of our researchers and the institutions that enable them.

Both UKRI and NSF intend to build on the metascience principles that the United States have outlined in the Kyoto Vision for a Golden Age of Science, and that both agencies have articulated in, respectively, the "NSF Leadership in a New Golden Age of Science" memorandum and the UKRI Strategy 2026-31.

The NSF and UKRI will collaborate on metascience, to apply the experimental and analytical process of science to the funding, practice, and orchestration of our respective science and technology enterprises. The NSF and UKRI recognize that the methods by which research is funded, conducted, and evaluated can themselves be studied and improved, and we can learn from our respective programs, data, and institutional experience. We intend to explore metascience cooperation in areas including:

• Measuring research productivity and impact;
• Improving research review and funding;
• Assessing how new methods and tools are used in research; and
• Enabling responsible analysis of metascience-relevant data.

The partnership between the NSF Office of Metascience and the UK Metascience Unit also supports the development of an international network of metascience units, which will bring together like-minded countries to exchange ideas, share best practices, and explore coordinated experiments and challenges regarding applied metascience.

In the coming months, NSF and UKRI intend to formalize this collaboration to put this partnership into practice and identify initial concrete, ambitious opportunities for joint metascience work.