About

🎓 This is research in progress

📆 Timeline

September 2023 – December 2027.

📌 Status

Protocol draft – Community feedback. Read and comment on Google Docs.

📣 What is AWARE?

AWARE is a decision support tool for Avoiding WAste in health REsearch. It allows users to upload studies and assess their value for decision-making.

AWARE mockup pictogram version 2026-03-03: Three-screen application workflow shown as monochrome pictograms connected by arrows. Screen 1 (Intake): a search bar with magnifier icon feeds a downward arrow into three solid black metadata fields representing auto-retrieved study data, below which six pill-shaped perspective options appear with one selected. Screen 2 (Checklist): six checklist items where the top three show filled checkboxes and solid text bars indicating pre-population from Screen 1, and the bottom three show empty checkboxes awaiting manual or AI completion, with an "AI Prompt ↗" button at the bottom. Screen 3 (Flag Report): five pennant flags differentiated by fill — solid black flags for problems, diagonal-hatched flags for warnings, and an outline-only flag for strengths — each paired with a title bar and a shorter citation bar.

Though designed AI-, mobile-, and web-first, a printer-friendly version will be available.

👥 Who is AWARE for?

AWARE supports six perspectives:

(1) general patient and public use, (2) peer reviewers, (3) ethics reviewers, (4) funding reviewers, (5) policy decision-making, and (6) point-of-care clinical decision-making.

🚀 Why is AWARE needed?

AWARE aims to identify and analyze reported cases of research waste to learn patterns of their social, economic, and career impacts. Tools exist to track retractions and problematic papers, but there are few original investigations on methodological, underreported, and other research waste.

✅ What types of studies does AWARE cover?

AWARE cross-cuts all pillars of health research: biomedical, clinical, health services, social, cultural, environmental, and population health.

👋 Community

A Google Doc of the research proposal is open to public comment. If you would like to do a full peer review, there is a discussion space available to GitHub users, or feel free to contact us. Links to open peer review platforms will be made available here on researchwaste.info once the preprint is published. Thank you very much for your interest!

Citation: Zhelnov P. Research Waste AWARE: a GitHub repository [Dataset]. GitHub. https://github.com/drzhelnov/aware

License: CC BY-SA 4.0 International