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The U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Metascience (NSF OMS) applies the scientific method to how science and engineering are funded, organized, and evaluated.
Situated within the NSF Office of the Director, NSF OMS works across NSF’s directorates and with the U.S. research enterprise to study existing practices, test new approaches, and translate evidence into improvements in how NSF supports scientific discovery to achieve broad impact.
OMS will build NSF's capacity to rigorously evaluate its investments and practices to identify exceptional ideas, empower talented researchers, reduce administrative burden, and accelerate discovery. OMS will operate with full transparency, sharing its experiments and findings clearly and publicly.
NSF-UKRI statement on metascience
NSF and UKRI will partner to identify concrete, ambitious opportunities for joint metascience work.
Learn moreApplying the scientific method to science funding
For over 75 years, NSF has helped sustain U.S. leadership in science and engineering, supporting foundational discoveries that have transformed industries and improved the lives of Americans. As the science and engineering enterprise evolves and research becomes more complex, NSF must continually identify emerging research areas and existing gaps to strengthen its support for the U.S. research ecosystem. NSF recognizes the need not only to invest in America's science and engineering enterprise, but also to continually improve how those investments are made to maximize benefits to public welfare, health, national security, and improve the lives of all Americans.
OMS is dedicated to applying the scientific method to the funding and practice of science itself — testing new approaches, measuring results, and building evidence for what works best. OMS is committed to strengthening NSF's merit review system by rigorously experimenting with review and funding mechanisms that augment our processes. This includes piloting distributed and phased reviews, attracting high-quality reviewer pools, and exploring innovative approaches like "golden tickets" that allow reviewers to champion promising ideas that may not achieve committee consensus.
What OMS will do
OMS is pursuing four areas of work to strengthen how NSF supports scientific discovery:
Experiment with research review and funding
OMS will work with other NSF components to design and evaluate new approaches to strengthen merit review, inform research funding choices, and improve award administration.
Evaluate research investments and portfolios
OMS will inform research funding decisions by generating robust evidence about the outcomes of NSF investments and identifying emerging research areas and existing gaps in the funding landscape. OMS will closely examine how scientific fields and research portfolios evolve, track how new methods and tools are used in research, and identify new research opportunities.
Facilitate evidence-based improvement
OMS will work across NSF components to translate research findings that are most effective for specific research objectives into practical improvements in program design, review processes, and award management.
Engage with the broader science and engineering community
OMS will operate with transparency, rigorously testing and sharing what works and what does not. The office will work across the scientific community to support metascience scholarship through grants, experimental results, and data, while ensuring privacy and confidentiality.
Building a self-improving science enterprise
OMS aims to generate robust evidence about the outcomes of NSF investments, inform strategic funding decisions, and accelerate the identification of emerging research areas. The ambition is to build enduring capacity to improve how the United States supports exceptional research, strengthening the institutions and practices that underpin American science and technology leadership.
As part of this effort, NSF and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) have announced their intent to cooperate on metascience, 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 lays the foundation for an emerging international network of metascience units.