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

• Collaboration is often a critical component in today's research that is dominated by complex problems, rapidly changing technology, dynamic growth of information 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 discusses 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. Interviews with members of one group and a center-wide sociometric survey were conducted. Data analysis has led to the development of a proposed framework that identifies multiple forms, or types, of collaboration that emerge among scientists (e.g., complementary and integrative collaboration) and their associated factors including personal compatibility, interrelationship of work, incentives and infrastructure. These results may help inform social and organizational practices needed to establish collaboration in distributed, multi-disciplinary research centers.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Tvärvetenskapliga studier inom samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Social Sciences Interdisciplinary (hsv//eng)

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap -- Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications -- Information Studies (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

collaboration

scientific research

scientific organisation

knowledge management

Publikations- och innehållstyp

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