An emerging view of scientific collaboration: Scientists' perspectives on collaboration and factors that impact collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration is often a critical aspect of scientific research, which is dominated by complex problems, rapidly changing technology, dynamic growth of knowledge, and highly specialized areas of expertise. An individual scientist can seldom provide all of the expertise and resources necessary to address complex research problems. This paper describes collaboration among a group of scientists, and considers how their experiences are socially shaped. The scientists were members of a newly formed distributed, multi-disciplinary academic research center that was organized into four multi-disciplinary research groups. Each group had 14 to 34 members, including faculty, postdoctoral fellows and students, at four geographically dispersed universities. To investigate challenges that emerge in establishing scientific collaboration, data were collected about members' previous and current collaborative experiences, perceptions regarding collaboration, and work practices during the center's first year of operation. The data for the study includes interviews with members of the center, observations of videoconferences and meetings, and a center-wide sociometric survey. Data analysis has led to the development of a framework that identifies forms of collaboration that emerged among scientists (e.g., complementary and integrative collaboration) and associated factors, which influenced collaboration including personal compatibility, work connections, incentives, and infrastructure. These results may inform the specification of social and organizational practices, which are needed to establish collaboration in distributed, multi-disciplinary research centers.

When do researchers collaborate? Toward a model of collaboration propensity

“…In addition, studies in this general class have found and analyzed patterns in these co-authorships, leading to findings that, for example, confirm Crane's (1972) notion of the invisible college of geographically distributed researchers well known to each other (D. J. d. S. Price, 1986), and the presence of intellectual centers in the global scientific arena (Luukkonen, 1992). In some cases, such centers are rendered explicit through the establishment of distributed multidisciplinary research centers that foster collaboration (Hara, Solomon, Kim, & Sonnenwald, 2003).…”

“…Evidence from a limited set of studies suggest that there is a positive relationship between email usage and remote collaboration (Cohen, 1996;Walsh & Bayma, 1996;Walsh, Kucker, & Maloney, 2000;Walsh & Maloney, 2002), but this question remains to be definitively answered. Hara, et al (2003) (Watson, 1968), but these do not likely represent the modal experience of scientists in collaborations.…”

Does “birds of a feather flock together” matter—Evidence from a longitudinal study on US–China scientific collaboration

“…Given the relative strength of the development of US and China nanotechnology, taking the two-sided nature of research collaboration beyond quid pro quo (Hara, Solomon, & Sonnenwald, 2003) into consideration, it is highly possible that only the most promising research of CKMs is recognized or acknowledged by US collaborators, which contributes to the widening gap between international and non-international collaboration at the individual CKM level.…”

Biological Information and Its Users

“…Many researchers have noted that the need to gain access to instruments, unique data, and funding for increasingly complex projects requires the assemblage of individuals and teams with diverse skills [2] . As many scientists become more and more highly specialized, these teams are necessary to solve complex problems.…”