For researchers
A public registry that takes your null results seriously.
The Experiment Society is a public infrastructure for civic experimentation. For academic and applied researchers, that means five concrete things you can do here: contribute evidence to the registry, propose replications of open findings, address documented evidence gaps, use the registry programmatically as a research dataset, and partner with cities through us when you need an implementation arm.
1. Contribute your work to the registry
We publish positive, null, and negative results with equal prominence. If you have run an experiment in any civic-policy domain — whether at a city, a state, or in an LMIC partnership — we want it in the registry. Unpublished internal evaluations are accepted, provided the methodology is documented enough to interpret.
All registry entries are published under CC-BY 4.0. Submitters retain authorship credit; the registry adds the cross-linking, standardised metadata, and downstream discoverability.
2. Propose a replication
The registry currently flags 60+ findings as "open for replication" — promising results from a single trial that have never been independently re-tested. A well-designed replication in a new context is one of the highest-value contributions you can make to the civic-evidence base, and we can help match you with a host city and (in many cases) funding.
Browse open-for-replication findings → · Propose a replication →
3. Address an open question
Every evidence synthesis and every policy page surfaces specific unresolved questions — places where the existing trials are silent. We aggregate all of them into a single public index that funders, grad students, and city teams use to find work worth doing.
4. Use the registry as data
The full registry is available as JSON and CSV under CC-BY 4.0. The endpoints are CDN-cached, versioned, and CORS-enabled. Build a dashboard, train a model on intervention effects, run a meta-analysis — we've made the data legible enough for programmatic use and we expect researchers to do exactly that.
The registry currently has 140 entries spanning 140 trials and counting.
5. Partner on a new pilot
We work with city departments, county agencies, and public authorities to design and evaluate civic experiments. For researchers, that means: if you have methods and need an implementation partner, we can match. If you have a city partner and need methodological support, we can fill that gap too. Most of the projects in the registry started as a single contact.
Other things worth knowing
- The glossary defines the registry's methodological vocabulary — useful for orientation if your work is in an adjacent field.
- The preregistrations system lets you publicly commit to a design before launch. Useful even if you're also filing on OSF or the AEA RCT Registry; the public preregistration page on this site provides additional discoverability and is automatically connected to the eventual registry entry.
- The funding directory lists 20+ foundations and federal programs that pay for civic-experiment evaluation. We help pilot teams identify funders as part of our partnership work.
- The sample-size calculator and pilot templates are the same tools we use ourselves when sketching out a new design.
Get in touch
Whatever the path in — submitting a finding, proposing a replication, adopting methodology, looking for a city partner — we'd rather start with a short conversation than a long form.
Start a conversation →