In July 2014, the PsySiP Project was registered in Washington DC as a non-profit research group to educate and encourage the use of concepts drawn from research into the “psychology of science” for application in high-level policy and planning. The PsySiP team of experienced policy analysts design and conduct rigorous studies that interpret the ways in which scientists organize and pursue their research in the digital age and then present options to policy leaders for structuring their efforts along similar lines as they address contemporary “Grand Challenges.”

The objectives of PsySiP are to elevate the role of the sciences in international policy and planning. Our work is guided by a board of distinguished international scientific leaders and, through our access to experienced analysts, PsySiP has responded effectively to invitations for evidence-based input to guide the work of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in developing the sustainable development agenda, starting with our response to the UNECE call for input in 2014. (See http://independent.academia.edu/PamelaFlattau )

PsySiP prepares informational policy briefs and, as a “boundary organization”, actively engages in policy dialogue with the scientific community through presentations at national and international meetings aimed at providing insights into the UN ECOSOC “Sustainable Development Agenda.” PsySiP was among the first nonprofit organizations, for example, to engage the psychology community in a discussion of the cultural research needed to accelerate the implementation of SDGs in Sub-Saharan Africa. (See Kaikage 2018 www.psysip.org )
Not all our efforts to establish the PsySiP Project as a “partner” in the international policy community have met with success.

In 2015, the co-directors of IEA-EBC Annex 66 (“Definition and Simulation of Occupant Behavior in Buildings”) invited PsySiP to join as a “Contributor” based on the PsySiP crowd-sourced and peer-reviewed policy briefs published by the UN ECOSOC SDG team and referenced in the UN Global Sustainable Development Report 2015 (See: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/627972-Flattau-Design%20and%20diffusion%20of%20smart%20energy%20monitors%20for%20sustainable%20household%20consumption.pdf and
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/634985-Kaijage-Achieving%20Sustainable%20Energy%20Consumption%20in%20Tanzania.pdf )

Our thought in joining Annex 66 was that we could encourage the creation of an international data platform for analytic purposes. We discovered, however, that then-current research on energy behaviors was fragmented and prevented the type of “meta-analysis” we believe would have been of value to the SDG policy community. There appears to be no vehicle in the current “partnership” network for the UN to encourage national/international investment into research on energy behavior to strengthen this science-policy partnership needed to achieve certain SDGs by 2030.

The PsySiP Project is organized as an independent policy research group that depends upon donors and other partners who offer their expert services as volunteers. Our primary focus is to assist the United Nations in meeting its “Sustainable Development Goals” through the attention to the sciences.
We pursued and view the “Special Consultative Status” granted to us by UN ECOSOC in June 2018 as validation of the innovative partnership we provide for furthering attention to the psychology of science in the service of international policies and programs.

The United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS) designated the PsySiP Project as a tax-exempt organization in 2016 – a useful tool for accepting contributions as “tax free” in support of our work.
PsySiP is not a membership organization and our plan has been to build an international network of interested contributors – whether financially or intellectually.
As any non-profit research group, we have put into place the financial and legal monitoring mechanisms recommended for use by the non-profit community, including GuideStar, and US government reporting requirements.
Annual meetings of the PsySiP Board of Directors since 2016 shape our agenda – and brought to the forefront the important role of “big data” in science and technology. We are senior collaborators with the “South ‘Big Data’ Hub”, an innovative network of scholars whose work is funded by the US National Science Foundation. PsySiP will host a symposium on harnessing “big data” through the cognitive sciences using the Smithsonian Encyclopedia of Life (EoL) at the upcoming annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Sciences in Washington DC in May 2019. (See https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6499662950704377856/ )

In October 2015, the PsySiP Executive Director, served as a member of the US Delegation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 5th OECD World Forum on Statistics, Knowledge and Policy to showcase the PsySiP Project as a concrete example of a research group promoting the use of innovative measures for country-level action in the pursuit of a new set of universal SDGs.
That same year, we were pleased that the UN ECOSOC selected our evidence-based and peer-reviewed policy briefs for inclusion in the Global Sustainable Reports of 2015 – and again in 2016.
The achievement of “special consultative status” with the UN ECOSOC not only validated our work but has opened the door to new partnerships in the coming years.
We also appreciated the recognition of the scientific community in granting us time at national and international meetings to discuss our insights into the “psychology of science” and the role it can play in advancing policy and planning nationally and internationally. A partial list of PsySiP presentations follows, copies of which may be found at www.psysip.org:
• International Congress of Applied Psychology
o Paris 2014
 Flattau “Strategic Placement of Citations in the Development of Formal Scientific Arguments in Behavioral Neuroscience”
o Montreal 2018
 Kaijage “The Data Revolution in Africa: A Role for Citizen-Generated Data”
 Kaijage “The Sub-Saharan Eco-Culture”
 Flattau “Data Management Training: Challenges and Solutions”
• American Psychological Association, Annual Meeting
o Washington DC 2014
 Flattau “Uneasy Partnerships: Factors that Foster Excellence in Psychological Science”
o Washington DC 2017
 Flattau “Tools, Teams and Training: A Brief History of NSF Doctoral Workforce Surveys Since 1957”
o San Francisco 2018
 Flattau “Towards a Digital Data Revolution in the History of Psychology:
A Roundtable Discussion
• American Psychologist December 2014 Vol. 69: pp. 933-934. Flattau Letter to the Editor: “The White House BRAIN Initiative Has the Potential to Further Strengthen Multidisciplinary Research and Training in Psychology”
• Association for Psychological Science, Annual Meeting
o New York City 2015
 Flattau “Text Analysis Reveals that Behavioral Neuroscientists Reach Chiefly to Australia, France, and Britain in Selecting Research Methodologies”
o Washington DC 2019
 PsySiP Symposium “Harnessing “Big Data’ with the Help of the Cognitive Sciences”



• American Association for the Advancement of Science, Annual Meeting
o Boston 2017
 Kaijage "Counting on Data to Manage Africa's Resources and Deliver on UN Sustainable Development Goals" FlashTalk presentation https://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2017/webprogram/Session15301.html
 Kaijage 5th Meeting of “Networks of Diasporas in Engineering and Science” (NODES) Forum, at the invitation of the US State Department, Office of Science and Technology Adviser (Moderator/Discussant) https://www.aaas.org/events/5th-nodes-forum-aaas-annual-meeting-2017

Financing is important to a fledgling policy science group such as the PsySiP Project. We are encouraged that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continues to solicit creative ideas to address the grand challenges at the heart of the many UN SDGs. We have submitted a proposal to the Gates Foundation based on our understanding of the potential role for “big data” to inform policy and planning at UN FAO.
PsySiP relies on its website to convey a sense of our skills and unique understanding of the policy-science nexus – anticipating that the Internet broadens our outreach globally.
However, we hope that the UN SDG Partnership Platform will consider innovative approaches to showcase the capabilities of civil society organizations engaged in promoting the sciences as a basis for implementation strategies.

As a member of the science and policy communities, we anticipate that the longer-term impact of our efforts will result in the publication of tools and scholarly works of interest to students and faculty around the world.
We will be looking to establish a consultative relationship with other UN groups, such as UNESCO, for expanding our network of international partnerships in the service of achieving SDGs by 2030.

We believe the PsySiP Project represents a “good practice” of civil society acting as a boundary organization at the nexus of science and policy. High-level planners and policy makers can accelerate SDG implementation strategies by adopting practices of contemporary scientists as embodied in our policy briefs for UN ECOSOC and the series of presentations to the scientific community. We will continue to bring our growing understanding of the “psychology of science” in the digital era to the attention of UN planners and policymakers – with a special focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.

In general, www.psysip.org