Research on Research mission statement

We are about to make some slight changes to our mission statement in the Research on Research (RoR) group. One good question should be why do we even care about having a mission statement? More than a fancy corporate term, a mission statement is something that helps in our day-to-day activities in terms of decision making. In other words, whenever difficult decisions have to be made, the mission statement provides a guide on why we are doing what we are doing. So, here is a first draft for discussion:

The mission of the RoR group is to conduct interdisciplinary studies of research systems in order to improve their productivity, quality, and cost-benefit.

• We focus primarily on biomedical research systems.
• Systems are defined as groups of elements with a defined purpose, involving both research processes and policies. For example, a researcher's process to write a manuscript, a research team process to complete a randomized trial, or a government policy maker creating a policy to optimize the allocation of research funding.
• Our goal is practical: We study systems so that they can achieve specific purposes for, for example, researchers, research teams, and research policy makers.