Researchers from the University of Sheffield have secured a £235,000 UK Research and Innovation Metascience grant to investigate how academic reward systems recognise the datasets and software underpinning AI-assisted research. The project, called "Paying it Forward," addresses a growing concern that while artificial intelligence can speed up data analysis, the groundwork of building datasets and open-source tools often goes under-credited in academic career progression and funding decisions.

Sheffield will receive £135,000 of the total grant, with the work led by Principal Investigator Dr Michael Foster and Co-Investigator Dr Edwin Brown, alongside collaborators Matt Spick (University of Surrey), Daren Howell (Crew Create Ltd) and George Regkoukos (University College London). The team plans to develop scalable metascience metrics and software tools to track how UK research communities create, reuse and extend digital resources, assessing whether new datasets and software meet FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). The findings are intended to give policymakers and funders evidence to better recognise and reward the foundational work behind AI-assisted research.