0000000001306856
AUTHOR
Nigel Gilbert
showing 7 related works from this author
Computational Models That Matter During a Global Pandemic Outbreak
2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is causing a dramatic loss of lives worldwide, challenging the sustainability of our health care systems, threatening economic meltdown, and putting pressure on the mental health of individuals (due to social distancing and lock-down measures). The pandemic is also posing severe challenges to the scientific community, with scholars under pressure to respond to policymakers’ demands for advice despite the absence of adequate, trusted data. Understanding the pandemic requires fine-grained data representing specific local conditions and the social reactions of individuals. While experts have built simulation models to estimate disease trajectories that may be enough to gu…
The role of civil society organisations in European responsible research and innovation
2018
EC policy reveals a strong conviction that CSO’s main function in EU-funded research and innovation projects is to take care of the ‘societal perspective’, which would not be adequately represented otherwise. With this, CSOs are supposed to be the main advocates of RRI in project consortia and are supported by all kinds of EC policy measures to fulfil this role. This conviction is not only problematic due to definition problems concerning CSO as such. Empirical data about the role of CSOs in high-tech/high-innovation research projects and the distribution of RRI activities among consortia members reveal that the role of CSOs is much more multi-faceted (data providers, providers of access to…
Computational Modelling of Public Policy: Reflections on Practice
2018
Computational models are increasingly being used to assist in developing, implementing and evaluating public policy. This paper reports on the experience of the authors in designing and using computational models of public policy (‘policy models’, for short). The paper considers the role of computational models in policy making, and some of the challenges that need to be overcome if policy models are to make an effective contribution. It suggests that policy models can have an important place in the policy process because they could allow policy makers to experiment in a virtual world, and have many advantages compared with randomised control trials and policy pilots. The paper then summari…
Assessing Peer Review by Gauging the Fate of Rejected Manuscripts: the case of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
2017
This paper investigates the fate of manuscripts that were rejected from JASSS-The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, the flagship journal of social simulation. We tracked 456 manuscripts that were rejected from 1997 to 2011 and traced their subsequent publication as journal articles, conference papers or working papers. We compared the impact factor of the publishing journal and the citations of those manuscripts that were eventually published against the yearly impact factor of JASSS and the number of citations achieved by the JASSS mean and top cited articles. Only 10% of the rejected manuscripts were eventually published in a journal that was indexed in the Web of Sci…
Attitudes of referees in a multidisciplinary journal: An empirical analysis
2016
This paper looks at 10 years of reviews in a multidisciplinary journal, The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), which is the flagship journal of social simulation. We measured referee behavior and referees' agreement. We found that the disciplinary background and the academic status of the referee have an influence on the report time, the type of recommendation and the acceptance of the reviewing task. Referees from the humanities tend to be more generous in their recommendations than other referees, especially economists and environmental scientists. Second, we found that senior researchers are harsher in their judgments than junior researchers, and the latter ac…
Co-Designing Social Simulation Models For Policy Advise: Lessons Learned From the INFSO-SKIN Study
2019
This paper describes a participatory approach to co-designing social simulation models with policymakers using a case study of modeling European Commission policy. Managing the collaboration of a wide range of individuals or organizations is challenging but increasingly important as policy making becomes more complex. A framework for a co-design process based on a participatory approach is proposed. The framework suggests that the collaborative design should go through the following phases: Identifying user questions, data provision, model discussion for validation, visualization of results and discussing scope and limitations with stakeholders. Key findings are that the co-design process r…
The role of civil society organisations in European responsible research and innovation
2018
EC policy reveals a strong conviction that CSO’s main function in EU-funded research and innovation projects is to take care of the ‘societal perspective’, which would not be adequately represented otherwise. With this, CSOs are supposed to be the main advocates of RRI in project consortia and are supported by all kinds of EC policy measures to fulfil this role. This conviction is not only problematic due to definition problems concerning CSO as such. Empirical data about the role of CSOs in high-tech/high-innovation research projects and the distribution of RRI activities among consortia members reveal that the role of CSOs is much more multi-faceted (data providers, providers of access to…