Science and Research have a non-negligible set of problems and issues that result in practice challenges and make the entire process inefficient, if not inaccurate or impossible. A frequently stated problem is the poor communication of scientific knowledge to other parts of society, including policy-makers, innovators, and citizens. Not only does it prevent the implementation of the best available technique in relevant domains, but also makes being a researcher an unpopular career path, makes researchers disconnected from the rest of the world, and reduces available funding to only what is deemed most appropriate according to the other powerful people disconnected from the researchers. This is by no means a trivial problem. The increasingly complex current world and interconnected, ill-defined grand challenges require novel and better ideas, as good as possible methods, the consideration of all available data and information, and a dedication to allocate all required financial, tangible, and human resources to be able to solve them. European Reference Framework for Researchers (a.k.a. ResearchComp) elaborate on these problems and several other cases more European-specific in nature based on related previous studies and expert judgements in their report oriented towards researchers. Moreover, among sustainable development goals (SDGs)
The main characters in these issues are researchers and students, mostly in academia, but also in non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and in government. The way they are being trained and expected to work does not permit high-level focus, creative insights, and the ability to consider all data "available" (so many researchers, too, do not provide their data to others at the expense of preventing the scientific advance). It should be common sense that when ten thousand researchers look at specific data, they will utilize it much better than a single researcher or research group. Historical, career future, reputation, and individual reasons prevent this common sense from being the "common" thing. Without further ado, researchers usually lack a comprehensive look at relevant data, as well as financial resources, training opportunities, and networks to tap even more resources or make their research impactful.
The status quo here decelerates scientific development and the development of society in general. Among other reasons, society is more vulnerable to disasters because of this, products and goods are not as efficient as they can be, and rather than considering society and -we- in general, scientists are more prone to get too individual and though they utilize the information accumulated by the entire humanity for thousands of years, the tools developed all over the world, the taxes collected through the country they are working from everyone, and indirectly from all people in the world through the tools and information they utilize generated elsewhere, they can go so far as to only share a part of the information they generate solely for their own benefit. Prevalence of such behavior in scientists may let others think that this is forced, yet other paths are available almost every day via open source tools, open science activities, and fully and freely accessible scientific knowledge dissemination media. Hence, the fact that scientists are getting too individual and are in an ivory tower can be altered for good for the sake of everyone.
FIRE-AE will provide training programs to enhance the researcher's transferable skills and be a role model in creating scientific knowledge for everyone without discrimination. The details of what is being planned by FIRE are on this webpage, especially in Trainer-Enhancer page.
The partners will undoubtedly be researchers, future researchers, funding agencies, scientific output disseminators, trainers, and other relevant people in their cases.
FIRE Araştırma Eğitim Ltd. Şti. aims to make scientific research less of a bureaucratic, financial, personal challenge, inequality enhancer entity to more open, encompassing, progressive, agile without compromising the quality and advancement it already brought and likely to bring.
How much impact FIRE has over researchers and society, in general, will be known via the number of researchers and researcher candidates trained, how the training enhanced or changed their skills and ideas, and the number of contracts and funds FIRE generates and provides for open scientific activities.
After the intervention of FIRE, researchers are targeted to be more proactive in policy-development-related communications, science communication to citizens, and the utilization of the best available method and information by others in their expertise. They will also be more versatile when needed, while they can focus on specific problems uninterrupted without being in an ivory tower.
FIRE sees itself as a key player in discovering new information, knowledge, and insight, training scientific researchers, and making high-quality scientific research more accessible and available to all. It will conduct research studies, enhance other researchers' works, fund research directly, and create/provide training/education material. After the enhancement of researchers and research itself, FIRE envisages a more powerful and resilient society that can reach the boundaries of intelligence and go beyond.
