Writing on research intelligence
Technical deep-dives, methodology notes, and perspectives on how data and AI are reshaping research strategy.
How a landscape analysis led to two national clinical trials
The story behind the Blood Biomarker Challenge at Alzheimer's Research UK — from an open brief on diagnostics to ~£12 million in investment and two major UK clinical trials for Alzheimer's blood tests.
Patent–publication citation linking from open data at global scale
How I built a fully open-data pipeline that processes 142 million patents, resolves 29.6 million non-patent literature citations to DOIs, and matches 4.35 million unique scholarly papers to OpenAlex records — with zero proprietary dependencies.
Does your research strategy need more... research?
Funders could benefit from approaching their new research strategies the way researchers approach experiments — with hypotheses, a willingness to be surprised, and data to back up their claims. Here is a set of open-data questions across six domains that can help any funder build a more evidence-informed strategy.
Quick tips for better impact evaluation
Four practical tips for funders who want to go beyond vanity metrics and use impact evaluation to make better strategic decisions — from refining what you measure to focusing on the people behind the research.
Researchers dislike Researchfish. Should funders too?
A deep-dive into the data quality issues found in Researchfish outputs at Alzheimer's Research UK — from ballooned publication counts to phantom leveraged funding — and why funders should think carefully before relying on this data for strategic decisions.
Tackling disparities in research funding: an opinionated guide for funders
Five opinionated learnings for research funders on how to meaningfully tackle gender disparities in scientific funding — from tying EDI work to strategy, to implementing double-blind review, to knowing when not to claim EDI as a priority.