Frequently Asked Questions
1. Will you scientifically evaluate the Adopt a Paper mentoring program?
Yes. As social scientists, we believe that any program or policy should be evaluated for its effectiveness, to determine whether it should be continued to be implemented, replicated, and/or scaled up. For this specific program, we believe that understanding whether it is effective is necessary to decide on whether it should be made permanent and possibly run by a professional organization. The evaluation will create data-based evidence that could lead other organizations, possibly even in other disciplines, to adopt the same model. Evaluating a program like this, according to standard research methods, requires randomly assigning some junior scholars to be in the control group. At this time, we expect to assign between 1/2 to 1/3 of junior scholars to the control group, based on the total number of applicants. The junior scholars in control group will not be assigned a mentor.
At this time, your participation in the program requires your participation in the evaluation and research study. The evaluation will use publicly available data obtained from the scholars' webpages.
At this time, your participation in the program requires your participation in the evaluation and research study. The evaluation will use publicly available data obtained from the scholars' webpages.
2. What will happen to the junior scholars in the control group?
They will keep doing research and working on their papers, as they normally do. They will not receive feedback from this group of mentors through the program, but are free to pursue publishing their paper however they like. The Adopt a Paper program will have no role in that process. If they apply to participate in future rounds of the program, they will be given priority in the randomization process. This means that they will be assigned to the treatment group conditional on the availability of mentors within the JEL codes of the submitted paper.
3. What kind of mentorship are junior scholars in the program expected to receive?
The program is specifically set up to allow junior scholars to receive feedback on the research paper they submitted at the application stage. Any interaction between senior and junior program participants are entirely at their discretion.
4. Will you have data on the communication between mentors and mentees, for instance the comments on the paper?
No. Adopt a Paper does not work as a journal submission system, where comments are submitted through a website and are accessible to editors. Once the matches are formed, mentors and mentees will be put in contact via email and they will then communicate in private between the two of them whenever they choose, using whatever method they wish. The Adopt a Paper team will have no role in observing those communications and will have no access to the feedback that a mentor provides on a paper.
5. Could senior scholars who have volunteered to participate as mentors end up not being matched with a paper?
Yes. This could happen because the matching process is based on the JEL codes written down by junior and senior scholars at the application stage. Depending on the number of available potential mentors and mentees for each JEL code, there may be an excess supply of mentors for some JEL codes and an excess demand for others.
6. What happens to mentors who are not matched with a paper?
They are invited to stay in the pool of potential mentors for future rounds of the program. They will have an option to remain in the pool of mentors or to "unsubscribe" and receive no further emails about Adopt a Paper.
7. What kind of data will you use?
We will know who is matched and who is not. At this point, we plan to evaluate the program using the matching data as well as publicly available data from the scholars' websites. We will have no access to any conversations or correspondence between mentors and mentees. If in the future we decide to collect survey data, participation in the survey will be voluntary and no identifying information will be collected as part of the survey.
8. Will you offer the program again in the future?
Yes. We plan to implement the program for multiple years to continue studying its efficacy.
9. Do you plan to expand the program to other junior scholars?
Due to capacity constraints, only U.S. based scholars were eligible in Round 1 of the program. Since Round 2, we have extended eligibility to Canadian- and European-based scholars as well. We might expand to other continents in future rounds.
10. Why didn’t you tell scholars that you would evaluate the program when advertising Round 1?
Given that a program like this had never been implemented before, it was important to understand what the general interest of junior and senior scholars was. We aimed to limit selection problems. The aim of the program is to expand access to high quality feedback among juniors who normally lack such access. Had we disclosed the research aspect upfront, there is a concern that specifically these juniors would have been less likely to apply.
During Round 1, and after the application deadline, we emailed all scholars who had filled in application form to inform them about the evaluation and the research component of the study. Scholars were also informed that they needed to opt-in if they agreed.
During Round 1, and after the application deadline, we emailed all scholars who had filled in application form to inform them about the evaluation and the research component of the study. Scholars were also informed that they needed to opt-in if they agreed.
11. When do you expect to have a paper out?
We expect to conduct several cycles of the program over multiple years in order to evaluate its effectiveness. A paper will be available only after the multiple rounds of data collection will be completed.
