Research Briefs

I would like to investigate the usefulness of an ‘agile’ methodology for producing academic work. The familiar mantra ‘release early; iterate often’ applies and the output is a short (and growing) “research brief” of 800-2000 words. Such an output should have all the citations and references necessary to aid the curious referee or reader and should not shy away from tackling highly-specialised problems or areas of interest within the field. The briefs should be version-controlled, publicly available and open for discussion and comment, particularly with a view to emendation or the co-ordination of a longer study which may expand upon the topics explored in the seed brief.

Increasing the rate of release of new results in any field should positively impact the creation of new ideas and methodologies and ensure their rapid criticism and reconstruction, if necessary. The present rate of publication is too slow.