Seize the Meta-Moment

The most comprehensive comparative metascience study to date is now available: The Research on Research Institute (RoRI) consortium, together with partners from 18 countries, including the FWF, has taken a close look at this emerging field of research. The results show that research on science and its funding is becoming increasingly important.

November 9, 2026

Visual zur Studie „Seize the Meta-Moment“ — In addition to the FWF, the Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation (FORWIT) and the Austrian Platform for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation (fteval) also contributed to the international study “Seize the Meta-Moment: How Metascience Is Evolving Worldwide.”

On November 3, 2026, the Research on Research Institute (RoRI) presented its latest study, “Seize the Meta-Moment: How Metascience Is Evolving Worldwide.”

This is the most comprehensive global analysis to date on the development of metascience. The study examines changes in institutions, investments, infrastructure, and expertise across 18 national research systems. It is supplemented by a freely accessible atlas containing data on nearly 500,000 scientific publications and provides the first cross-national overview of self-evaluation and reform processes within the scientific community.

Even if the term “metascience” is still little known in Austria, the scientific analysis of research and its funding has a long tradition. For more than 30 years, over 30 organizations have come together under the umbrella of the Austrian Platform for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation (fteval) to address this topic, developing common standards and hosting a major international conference every two years.

The FWF has published more than 30 studies on program evaluations, funding procedures, and the impacts of research funding. It also provides comprehensive data on its funding and supports initiatives that promote metascience analyses, including, for example, the Barcelona Declaration, OpenAlex, CrossRef, the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), cOAlition S, and the Research on Research Institute (RoRI).

The growing interest in metascience is not without challenges: While political backing builds unprecedented momentum, it also risks tethering metascience to a narrow national agenda with a focus on speed, efficiency, and institutional disruption. As the report warns, the risk is that metascience gets treated as a neutral exercise in “doing what the data say,” obscuring the reality that all forms of science evolve in terms of direction as well as volume and scale. Deciding what to measure, fund, or change involves judgements about values and priorities that evidence alone cannot resolve.

That is why the report highlights plurality as the field's greatest strength. Drawing on the first comprehensive comparative mapping across 18 countries (Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Namibia, Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States), the study shows that metascience cannot be reduced to a single institutional model or purpose. At its best, global metascience keeps alternative pathways, values, and democratic choices open.

Falk Reckling, co-chair of the project working group and Head of the Department for Strategy, Policy, Evaluation and Analysis at the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) said: “These pluralities, and the conditionalities that surround them, are the most important finding of the Meta-Moment project. This report represents the fullest attempt so far to describe metascience as it actually exists: as a multitude of practices, shaped by national histories, institutions and purposes. It is not a single movement with a single agenda.”

James Wilsdon, lead author of the study and Executive Director at the Research on Research institute, said: “Metascience is having its moment: Political attention, new money and a shared vocabulary have arrived together, from Washington to London, Beijing to Dublin, Tokyo to the Hague. But moments pass. The real test is not how much apparatus we can build while attention lasts – it’s whether we embed the data, relationships and habits of experimentation that will be useful when it moves on.”

The FWF participated in this study as a co-funding partner, co-coordinator, and co-author. The Austrian Council for Sciences, Technology, and Innovation (FORWIT) and the Austrian Platform for Research and Technology Policy Evaluation (fteval) contributed to the country study on Austria.