Academic and research evaluation often struggles with information overload and lack of specialized expertise, leading to potentially valuable research being overlooked. This creates inefficiencies in funding and publication decisions. One approach to address this could be providing evaluation managers with curated, high-quality research summaries that highlight key papers and their relevance to specific themes.

The Core Concept

The idea would involve hiring qualified researchers to produce focused reports on specific research themes. Each researcher could:

• Select a relevant evaluation theme
• Survey key papers and trends in that area
• Identify one particularly valuable paper
• Create a concise (5-10 page) summary focused on evaluation relevance

This would be structured as paid, short-term projects (about 16 hours each) to maintain quality while keeping the process flexible.

Implementation Strategy

An initial phase could test the concept with:

1. Recruiting 3-5 researchers through direct outreach
2. Creating clear report guidelines and examples
3. Piloting with a few selected research themes
4. Gathering feedback from evaluation managers

If successful, this might expand to include more standardized templates, a researcher application process, and potentially a database of curated summaries.

Differentiation From Existing Solutions

Unlike general literature review services, this approach would specifically focus on evaluation relevance rather than broad academic significance. Compared to academic abstracting services, it would emphasize long-term impact and practical evaluation criteria rather than just recent publications. The unique value would come from the specialized focus on what makes research valuable for assessment contexts.

This approach could save evaluation managers time while maintaining depth, help researchers gain recognition for their work, and potentially lead to better-informed funding and publication decisions.