Join a Symposium! Do great research! Burnish your brand!
Peers help each other to do
their best research.
Your discoveries are published and
vigorously promoted worldwide.
Peers help each other to do
Your discoveries are published and
Accomplish more, every day.
Overview
Our online Symposia involve all kinds of team-work: the longitudinal kind where new discoveries build on earlier ones and the latitudinal kind where researchers do their own independent work in a co-operative and collaborative way.
How It Works
Each Symposium has one broad topic – a group of related problems. It lasts about three years and is divided into three phases. The hundreds of participants are experts on the topic and they divide into four-member teams called roses. Competing cohorts of roses emerge. Each petal in the winning cohort receives a substantial financial award.
The Knowledge Builder
Academic Researcher
Your Brand
As a participant, you take a nom de plume for the duration of the Symposium. You write one article per phase on an aspect of the Symposium topic. When these are published, under your real name, they enhance your personal brand.
Co-operation
During a phase, you post the latest version of your current article to our platform on the last day of each calendar month. In return, by the end of the following month, you receive a constructive critique from each of your fellow-petals who are strongly incentivised to elicit your best work. And you do the same for them. In this way, you become inspired to do sound work, solve problems, and make discoveries.
Collaboration
Towards the end of each phase, you and your fellow-petals collaborate to write a paper that muses over and distils the essence of what the rose has achieved during that phase. This provides closure for the current phase and a spring-board for the next one.
Cross-Pollination
In Phase Two, your read-horizon expands to include other roses in your bunch. This provides a further source of inspiration.
Preparation
Before each Symposium, we conduct a Meta-Symposium which distils the history of the topic to date. This provides a launch-pad for the Symposium and some shared background for Symposium participants.
Publication
A few months after the end of a Symposium, the work from all three phases is published as a well-structured, multi-volume monograph where each volume is accompanied by video material.
Ownership
Before the publication of your work, you must ensure that it contains due acknowledgement through citation, to any other book, article, or critique on which it builds.
The Deal
You do your best work and in return, you get fame and fortune! We facilitate, review, rate, and publish your work. Then we promote it energetically planetwide. You receive high royalties on sales and have a high chance of winning a cohort award.
The Knowledge Sponsor
Taxpayers, Alumni, and Philanthropists
Overview
If you sponsor your academics to participate in a Symposium, your country or university will attract more resources, staff, and students while also making a major contribution to peace.
Productivity
By participating in a Symposium, an academic delivers three solo articles and three collaborative articles. This is a 70% increase in productivity.
Evaluation
Each of these articles receives three double-blind, peer-reviews and a rating. These are published alongside the article.
Savings
As a Knowledge Sponsor, you pay the Symposium Participation Fee for each of your academics. The price per article is the same as the publication fee you currently pay the academic journals. But, with High Rose House, you get co-operation and collaboration among your protégés, a robust new metric while also saving the expense of project-management, appraisals, and mentoring. Furthermore, each of your academics has a high chance of receiving a substantial financial award.
High Quality
Iteration produces a virtuous upward spiral of increasingly subtle and sound solutions. However, it only occurs if the academic’s attention can be engaged for each iteration. Intra-rose critiques guarantee this several times within each phase.
Wide Comprehension
The prospect of royalties on sales of the Symposium output ensures the academics are well-motivated to write in a way that is widely comprehended. This means their output engages the public and achieves high cultural impact.
Burning Topics
We ask sponsors, members, policy-makers, and others to suggest topics that may be important for the advance of civilisation, health, and happiness. This ensures the topics are of burning and widespread interest and guarantees high public engagement.
Faster Evolution
Each generation of knowledge builds on the earlier generation’s. Currently this process is slow and much excellent work, including negative findings, are never published.
The Deal
A university or college, can back a couple of its academics as champions for a currently open topic by paying their Symposium Participation Fees, thereby helping to push forward the boundaries of knowledge on a global but level playing field.
The Knowledge Consumer
Reader of research articles
Overview
As someone who wants up-to-date knowledge on a variety of topics, your prayers are answered.
Up-to-date
When you want to find out what is currently known for a topic that interests you, we enable you to do this without making a tortuous journey through bibliographies interrupted by paywall navigation only to find impenetrable prose, undefined technical terms, and unexplained premises. In addition, you avoid uncertainty about whether you have arrived at the end of your journey.
Well-structured
We publish each set of Symposium works as an eMonograph. It is well-structured: it consists of several volumes each containing three chapters. Each chapter consists of several sections. Each section consists of articles introduced by an overview paper. For each volume there is a video distillation.
Low Price
When you buy an article from a Symposium eMonograph, you choose from a library of articles containing concentrated, up-to-date knowledge on the topic for a very low price.
Anytime, Anywhere Access
You can access it anytime, anywhere from any electronic device no need to go to your university library. The text and video components are in widely comprehended English with all technical terms defined and presuppositions explained in a central repository.
Easy Article Selection
Each article or paper is accompanied by three double-blind peer-reviews and a rating, to guide you in apportioning your attention.
Key Facts
Participants are 70% more productive
Symposium participants publish 1.94 articles per annum, while non-participants publish only 1.15 articles per annum.
Produce Higher Quality Work:
Get several constructive critiques per Symposium article.
158 million Knowledge Consumers
Academics: 2.4 million
Students: 25 million
Degree and above: 131 million
Champions
CHAMPION OF OPEN UK
The Right Honorable Boris Johnson MP:
“The UK has a proud history of scientific discovery, but to lead the field and face the challenges of the future we need to continue to invest in talent and cutting-edge research.
“That is why as we leave the EU I want to send a message that the UK is open to the most talented minds in the world and stand ready to support them to turn their ideas into reality.”
Prime Minister UK 2019-
CHAMPION OF ‘WHAT’ NOT ‘WHERE’
The Right Honorable Amanda Solloway MP:
“If there is pressure to publish in particular venues, we are wrongly suggesting that where you publish is more important than what you say. I notice that 97% of outputs in the 2014 REF were text-based and published in journals.”
“I am thrilled with the appointment of Professor Leyser and I look forward to working closely with her to drive forward our shared ambition to boost our world-leading research and development.
Since its launch in 2018, UKRI has gone from strength to strength. Professor Leyser has already led a highly collaborative lab in her previous role which will be a great skill to bring to UKRI as it embarks on a new stage of exciting evolution.”
Science Minister in UK Cabinet 2019-
CHAMPION OF UK AT THE CUTTING EDGE
The Right Honorable Alok Sharma MP:
“Professor Leyser’s appointment comes at a critical time for the UK. The coronavirus pandemic has shown the importance of science for our future and UKRI has a vital role to play in this.
As the new Chief Executive, Professor Leyser will drive forward UKRI’s mission to create the great British companies of the future and help keep the UK at the cutting edge of global research and development.”
Business Secretary in UK Cabinet 2019-
CHAMPION OF COLLABORATION
Prof Dame Ottoline Leyser:
“During my career, I have seen the power of genuinely collaborative cultures to catalyze the transformative thinking needed to create effective solutions.
Some people think good research is done by a few lone geniuses – if you fund a few people with huge brains and let them loose, results will follow. But I want more collaborative research environments that place less emphasis on individual brilliance. I am interested in research integrity and not rewarding scientific game-playing. I am concerned about how bad incentives lead people to publish all the time and too much weight is placed on producing headline-grabbing results, rather than encouraging a culture in which good science happens.
If you are only doing ground-breaking research, you simply end up with a lot of holes in the ground. UKRI could play its part in fixing a system where people only get promoted for having publications in flashy journals.
”
CEO of UKRI of UKRI and author of
Mechanisms in Plant Development
CHAMPION OF PARADIGM-SHIFTS, PERMEABILITY AND ENGAGING PROSE
Sir Paul Nurse:
“More consideration needs to be given to highly significant scholarly impact, that is, work which has a major influence on a field, resulting in a ‘paradigm shift’ to use the language of Thomas Kuhn.”
“The research endeavour has to be permeable and fluid, allowing the ready transfer of ideas, skills, people in all directions between sectors, research disciplines, the span of the research endeavour, and its potential beneficiaries.”
I would like academic prose, where possible, to “grab the imagination”.
Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute:
Ensuring a Successful Research Endeavour 2015.
A Review of the UK Research Councils
CHAMPION OF META-ANALYSIS, INTER-DISCIPLINARITY, IMPACT & ENGAGEMENT
Lord Nicholas Stern:
“Finding ways to ensure that the Research Excellence Framework can encourage researchers to explore the big or fundamental problems, . . . to deliver academically excellent synthesis of evidence and meta-analysis to support policymaking, and to develop game-changing ideas that, for example, can lead to the development of new disciplines, or that have a significant impact outside their discipline, is a priority.”
“Interdisciplinary approaches and collaboration between institutions and other sectors can enhance both academic and socioeconomic creativity and impact of research. Furthermore, as universities increasingly commit to addressing complex, intrinsically-difficult ‘Grand Challenges’ of global importance, there is a clear recognition that such issues and problems require a different range of perspectives that interdisciplinarity and collaboration can foster.”
“We recommend that impact on public engagement and understanding are emphasized and that impacts on cultural life are specifically included.”
Former Chief Economist & Senior Vice-president of the World Bank;
Professor of economics and government; and Chair of the Grantham Research
Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics
CHAMPION OF SCIENTIFIC VIRTUE
Sir Mark Walport:
“There is a spectrum of unreliable science from wickedness through incompetence and sloppiness to unluckiness. We must focus our efforts on ensuring the trustworthiness of the scientific endeavour. There is no magic bullet to eliminate misconduct and the policy aim of funders, researchers and institutions is to minimize incentives which lead to fraudulent behavior.”
The Royal Society Conference on
The Future of Scientific Scholarly
Collaboration in 2015
CHAMPION OF INNOVATION AND INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
Alicia Greated:
“Innovation is complex. The journey from Idea to the market is not straight forward and requires a diverse range of know-how, investment, market knowledge, and research.
We recognize that innovation challenges and opportunities are also global, so we will find and make connections with new, targeted international partners that add value to our network. We will collaborate globally to create a valuable international connection for innovators.”
KTN Strategy 2000-2025
CEO of Knowledge Transfer Network
CHAMPION OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Michael Ignatieff:
“Populist leaders have understood there is a deep suspicion of privilege, authority, and entitlement of academics. We must take seriously the battle to defend what universities
do. They are seekers of knowledge. They are the oldest self-regulating institution and as such represent freedom and democracy. I am shocked by the cancel culture.”
President and Rector of Central European
University in the THE World Academic Summit
CHAMPION OF WELL-BEING
Beth Thompson:
“I want to help build a better research culture – one that is creative, inclusive, and honest. Current practices prioritize outputs at almost any cost, damaging people’s wellbeing and undermining the quality of research. We need to reimagine how research is conducted.”
Head of UK and EU Policy and Advocacy
at Wellcome Trust
FAQ
Those Knowledge Builders that get the most out of our Symposia are the ones that ask the most questions. We love them because we only want you to participate in a Symposium if you know without a doubt that it is the best and most efficient way to advance civilization and your career.
So, here are the most frequent questions we have been fielding.
Getting your work published in a high prestige journal is an achievement. The Symposium Model publishes all work written during a Symposium. You are asking: where is the achievement in this?
Being Sponsored: An Olympics participant has worked hard to qualify, so being a participant is already a big achievement. Similarly, being a participant in a Symposium means that you have impressed a sponsor, usually your university and it has agreed to pay your participation fee – this is already a big achievement.
Winning an Award: If you are part of the Symposium’s winning Cohort, this is also an achievement just like belonging to the winning team in the FIFA world cup. The aggregate star-rating for the winning cohort is highest because it contains more talented players and players with more team spirit – ones that have helped each other to achieve high star-ratings for their work.
Individual Evaluation: Having your work published by a Symposium may seem prima facie like vanity publishing. It is, however, more like participating in a marathon race. In such a race, everyone crosses the finishing line and each person is evaluated in terms of time taken and finishing rank.
Three Reviews and Ratings: Each Symposium work receives three double-blind peer-reviews that are published alongside it. In addition, each work receives a star-rating based on marks out of ten for originality, rigor, significance, and clarity. The reviewers are trained, supervised, and using agreed criteria and standards.
Six Publications: During a two-year Symposium, you write three solo articles and collaborate on a further three. These articles are published as part of a monograph at the end of the Symposium. We promote this vigorously and planetwide to 153 million Knowledge Consumers, not just universities.
Article Impact Measure: All citations must legally be registered on our system. This means we can calculate the number and the geographical distribution of your citations. These contribute to your annual Article Impact Measure (AIM).
Inaccurate Measure of Achievement: The traditional way of evaluating your work essentially runs as follows: Each journal that publishes your work has a Journal Impact Factor (JIF). This is an index calculated by Thomson Reuters as a measure of how many citations its articles have received in the previous two years. It is assumed that if a journal has a high JIF, it has a high rejection rate and so the size of your achievement in having an article published by a given journal can be measured by reference to its JIF. Add up the JIFs of your published articles to get a rather indirect and crude measure of the value of your work.
Publication Lottery: The traditional system is a lottery. There are so many factors that determine whether your submission to a journal is published:
- the rejection rate of that journal
- the policy of the journal at the time
- what else is submitted at the same time
- various biases of those peer-reviews that are not double-blind
- the journal's current scheme for gaming the JIF.
These are all outside your control so, whether your submission gets published is a bit of a lottery. The uncertainty and indefinite delay in getting your article accepted is frustrating and this distracts you from your work.
Secretive, Wasteful, and Slow: The traditional system is also secretive, wasteful, and slow. An exclusive journal publisher has a high rejection rate, sometimes as high as 90%. However, only the editor sees the rejected submissions, so their decisions can never be publicly questioned or discussed. In addition, these Journals are wasting much valuable work or at best slowing down the evolution of knowledge.
Prevent Brain Drain: In the current climate, it is important to improve our economies. The best way to do this is to ensure that knowledge evolves as fast as possible.
A bad way to do this is to ensure that young academic talent is drained out of academia. Currently, they are draining out because they are paid so little at their time of greatest need - when they are founding families. The financial awards offered under the Symposium model provide them with a way to improve their situation through their own efforts.
A bad way to do this is to make no provision for emeritus academics. Many of these have ample time and abundant health and the Symposium model allows them to make further contributions to society while improving their social world and maybe also their financial situation.
A bad way to do this is to put those academics in their prime, those most likely to push the boundaries of knowledge, under severe competitive pressure because of the paucity of tenured jobs. The Symposium model provides a setting in which competition is alleviated by collaboration and cooperation and where they can improve their financial position while waiting for advancement.
More Concerted and Cooperative Effort: Our awards are not as prestigious as those bestowed by the Royal Society or the Nobel Foundation for brilliance in a specific discipline. However, they are given to a much larger number of people and thereby elicit greater concerted and cooperative effort – an effort which may cross discipline boundaries.
Good Deal for Sponsors: Furthermore, the Symposium model is so efficient that, despite the prize money, Sponsors will still pay 34% less per published article than they do in the present system. This is because we make no profit on the Symposium itself. Our profits depend on our sales of the Symposium output.
Reward the Best: China is investing heavily in academia. The Symposium model gives each country an opportunity to reward its high achieving scholars.
Work output by a Symposium is likely to be of a much higher quality for several reasons:
Team-work: The work you do within a Symposium is likely, overall, to be of a higher quality because you work within a small team of academics – a Rose. The other members of your Rose are incentivized to elicit your best work by their desire to belong to the winning cohort.
Seven Iterations: Each of your solo articles are refined by seven iterations and your attention is harnessed each time by a critique of the article’s latest version from each of your fellow-petals.
Real Other Minds: Your task is less strenuous because you are addressing real, specific other minds rather than other minds in general - this means you have more energy to devote to the substantive content.
Expanding Knowledge: All participants have some shared background because they will have access to the output from a Meta-Symposium which distills the important works relevant to the Symposium topic. This means that the work done in a Symposium must push the boundaries of knowledge rather than explore what is currently known.
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