Contributing Research Fellow — Federal Policy Formation (Published Byline, Novel Dataset)

We're looking for a researcher to produce an original, citable finding using a dataset that doesn't exist anywhere else. **The dataset:** The Shaping Window Intelligence Index tracks how federal public-capital formation moves across procurement, grants, research funding, policy, and lobbying — with 53 years of historical depth on the procurement rail alone. It covers 12 active issue-formation windows (AI governance, grid resilience, healthcare IT, semiconductors, rural broadband, and more), 7 data rails, 156 quarters of time-series data, and a governed event-window association layer that maps formation patterns against legislative landmarks, security shocks, electoral cycles, and technology inflections. Nobody else has assembled this surface. The questions it enables haven't been asked yet. **What you'll do:** - Choose your own research question (we don't assign topics — your curiosity drives it) - Work with the full public dataset via API and the interactive Window Finder tool - Produce one governed research finding (1,500–3,000 words, with quantitative evidence) - Go through an editorial process that sharpens your work, not one that softens it **What you'll get:** - **Named byline** on a published article at theshapingwindow.com - **Full citation credit** — your name, your finding, citable in academic and professional contexts - **Cash compensation** per deliverable (rate discussed in proposal) - **Editorial training** in temporal, non-causal research grammar — a discipline useful far beyond this project - **First-mover advantage** on a new benchmark category — be among the first researchers using this dataset - **PDF of your published finding** for your portfolio, CV, or dissertation appendix - **ORCID-compatible publication metadata** **What this is NOT:** This is not content writing. You are not ghostwriting for us, producing SEO copy, or drafting marketing material. You are an independent researcher producing original work under your own name. The editorial process exists to enforce governance standards (no causal claims, no political attribution, full data provenance) — not to change your conclusions or direct your inquiry. **The editorial standard:** We publish under a governance charter modeled on index-publisher methodology governance. The key discipline: all findings are **observational, not causal; temporal, not predictive; governed, not speculative.** You describe what the data shows. You don't claim why it happened. If that constraint sounds limiting, consider: the most citable research in economics and political science follows exactly this discipline. We just make it explicit. **Ideal background (any of these):** - Public policy, political economy, public administration, government, economics - Science policy, technology governance, urban/regional planning - Federal data analysis (procurement, grants, appropriations) - Think tank research, foundation research, government advisory - Quantitative policy journalism - Political science, public finance, or institutional economics **What makes a strong proposal:** 1. A writing sample — academic paper, policy brief, published article, or working paper 2. A one-paragraph sketch of a research question you'd want to explore using federal formation data (it's fine if it's rough — we'll help you refine it) 3. A sentence or two about your domain background We don't need a CV or cover letter. The writing sample tells us what we need to know. **Timeline:** Flexible — we work around your schedule. Typical engagement: 2–4 weeks from data access to submitted draft, one editorial round, publication within a week of final approval.