About METIUS
Billions of people could be better off if we used the evidence and research funding available more effectively.
METIUS is a £11.5 million UKRI-funded infrastructure initiative designed to revolutionise how scientific evidence is synthesised and delivered to policymakers in the UK and globally. It will help policymakers achieve better results for less money by providing timely summaries of the state of current knowledge through a transparent scientific process known as evidence synthesis. This work is urgently needed to help achieve the missions and priorities of all levels of UK government; to support the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals; to help the world tackle the climate crisis; and to help individuals, businesses, and local decision-makers around the world to achieve their goals. Our current inability to utilise research effectively is compromising our collective ability to develop effective policy.
To address this, we will:
- Create new breakthrough AI and open data infrastructure to make evidence synthesis faster, cheaper, and more relevant to policymakers' needs in the UK and globally.
- Develop new research methods to tackle some of the biggest needs of policymakers using evidence synthesis — applying evidence from one context to another; answering large-scale questions; and assessing varied research, evaluations and other evidence types.
- Engage directly with policymakers to understand their needs and promote evidence usability and uptake.
- Deliver exemplar living evidence syntheses in areas of national and international importance: education; crime and justice; climate; environment and society; and sustainable development.
The overall result will be a flexible, scalable infrastructure applicable across social science and public policy, supported by a growing network of organisations committed to promoting and using evidence synthesis to inform decision-making.
