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Putting together a scientific team: collaborative science
Science & Society
Putting together a scientific team: collaborative science L. Garry Adams Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4467, USA
One of the most enjoyable parts of a science career is collaborative team experiences and developing life-long social networks. When the hypothesis being tested requires innovative efforts greater than any single laboratory, collaboration becomes an essential component for success – everyone is a stakeholder and trust is the driving force. Recently while speaking at an international scientific meeting where I presented the results generated by the combined effort of our network of six coast-to-coast collaborative laboratories, I stated that some of the most enjoyable parts of research were the team-related collaborative research experiences and successes. I also made the statement that these collaborative experiences often form the basis to continue our social interactions and develop lifelong friendships with colleagues and collaborators as we meet periodically for scientific meetings. I challenged the younger and mature scientists alike in the audience to not miss this part of their career in science as this aspect of science provides the substance for a ‘life within science’. After my presentation, graduate students, early career scientists, and seasoned investigators approached me and asked how could enjoyable science occur in the face of funding constraints that encourage competition rather than collaboration. I responded that there must be more to life in a career in scientific discovery than continuous competition, or we will not be able to attract and sustain the next generation of scientists. Virtually all of us seek some level of satisfaction and life within science. Thus, the purpose of this Science & Society commentary is to provide some basis or framework for team building and how work is accomplished while enjoying team-based collaborative science that enhances productivity in a highly competitive funding environment. As a pathologist whose research is focused on the molecular pathogenesis of infectious diseases and at the risk of offending social scientists, I provide here some personal insights on how to put together a scientific team and actually enjoy collaborative science. Team building is a multifaceted human interactive process of developing relationships while prioritizing and balancing goals and philosophies as illustrated in Figure 1. By contrast, collaborative science [1] involves Corresponding author: Adams, L.G. ([email protected]). Keywords: science; collaboration; team; trust; leadership; stakeholder; social network. 0966-842X/ ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2014.05.001
developing and sustaining a strong team of collaborating teams. Note in Figure 1 that trust (Box 1) is one of the principal components of team building in which effective team leadership is more about shared visions, coaching and balancing specialized scientific expertise, and systems-level generalist thinking than strict management control [2]. Team leadership skills are essential to shaping and implementing collaborative team research [3] to build trust and mutual understanding to negotiate joint goals and enhance creative discovery. Successful team leadership activities require enormous energy, commitment, skill, and continual nurturing to implement structures, processes, tools, and sociotechnology communication systems while harmonizing participants [3,4]. Based on other’s experiences and recommendations [5–7] (http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/ dynamicissuesinscientificintegrity.pdf) and my own experiences spanning 46 years of team building and collaborative research in laboratories across diverse cultures and languages on four continents, the fundamental elements of enjoying a successful collaborative career in science require from the onset agreement on: (i) shared vision on the central overarching, high-level hypotheses; (ii) candid openness and transparency of rights and responsibilities; (iii) trusted partnership; (iv) mutually supporting capabilities; (v) prenegotiated coauthorships; (vi) documented prenegotiated intellectual property ownership; and finally (vii) a sense of stakeholder ownership by the collaborative research teams. The dynamic nature of interactions of the major components is nicely illustrated in Figure 2, which is focused on generating and reinforcing trust. The nature of these complex collaborative relationships will be shaped and formed by these elements such that all are required and will need to be balanced for the eventual win-win-win success of collaborating teams. For a deeper analysis of the dynamics of successful team research, the National Research Council, Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, will issue a report in 2014 of a consensus study ‘The Science of Team Science’ (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bbcss/current projects/dbasse_080231) analyzing multiple factors influencing team dynamics with the ultimate goal to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative research in science teams, research centers, and institutes. Major funding agencies, foundations, and private enterprise are fostering the movement towards collaborative big science, centers of excellence, and grand challenges [8] at community [9], institutional, agency, national, and international levels of engagement to address national [8,10], Trends in Microbiology, September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
483
Science & Society
Trends in Microbiology September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
TRENDS in Microbiology
Figure 1. The complexity of the components of successful team building as illustrated by a word cloud of hierarchical human interactions and social networking. Note: trust, leadership, behavior, relationship, and feedback are major components of win-win-win teams. Image used with permission from Amir Zukanovic/Dreamstime.com LLC.
international, and global issues [11], impacting the ability of humankind to live in harmony with our environment. As early as 1986 [12], changes in research funding models were gradually shifting the direction of science away from competitive towards more collaborative research [13,14]. Although these scientific collaborations are focused at the highest corporate levels of governments, foundations, and private enterprise, how can these shifts in research policy facilitate building our own individual teams for collaborative science and ultimately long-term enjoyable social networks? The collaborative team-building process usually begins when principal investigators of laboratories discover the need for added knowledge or expertise from another laboratory to test high-level hypotheses, a process that may be influenced by the nature of the funding source. In other words, when the development of a shared vision on the approach to testing high-level hypotheses is agreed upon between laboratories through open and candid debate and Box 1. Trust The basic assumption is that as scientific collaboration increases so will the advancement of knowledge for the betterment of society and environment, yet successful outcomes ultimately hinge largely on the most basic of human relationships – trust. 484
How work gets done in networks Social networks
Openness
Enables
Reinforces
Trust Transparency
Knowledge sharing
Fosters
Diversity
Innovaon TRENDS in Microbiology
Figure 2. Interactive fundamental components of collaborative science built on trust. Trust only emerges when knowledge is shared and diversity of opinions is acceptable. Image used with permission from Harold Jarche (jarche.com).
Science & Society discussion, the collaboration will begin to grow towards the application of complementary capacities, performing early stage experiments, generating preliminary data, creating new ideas, coauthoring proposals, and so on. At this stage, the level of interaction is in reality a series of scientist-toscientist human relationship experiments that test the level of trust among leaders of early stage collaborating laboratories [15]. If the scientist-to-scientist trust experiments are successful, then research productivity will steadily progress and the environment will be created for solid dialog to prenegotiate and resolve authorship and intellectual property ownership. If these issues are not resolved early in the process by the leaders of the laboratories, the team never really forms and the collaboration will usually fail. As a consequence of putting together a ‘team of teams’, the sense of shared ownership begins to grow further strengthening the level of trust and productivity. From my experience, one of the best ways to accelerate the team-building process at the individual level is to exchange graduate students and postdoctoral fellows between laboratories, even for short periods of time. The trust and ownership of the shared vision will begin to emerge at all levels in the laboratories when principal investigators, laboratory managers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students understand that in order to test high-level hypotheses each participant must be engaged to move knowledge to the next higher level. Trust and ownership cannot be implemented, but through dedicated efforts, these traits will become the culture of both the laboratory leadership and personnel. From my experience chairing almost 60 doctoral graduate student committees and guiding numerous postdoctoral fellows, once the social networks of trust and friendship are formed, they will endure and be productive and enjoyable for decades. I am fully aware that collaborative science may not be for everyone, but many successful scientists have adopted this approach to science and life. It is during this collaborative building process that genuine trust is created and strengthened to form the basis of life-long social networks and friendships that are rekindled any time collaborators meet to celebrate scientific successes or rationalize their
Trends in Microbiology September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
failures – a sense of life within science emerges through team building and collaborative science. So even during periods of reduced funding, I continue to encourage the scientific community to enjoy a career in scientific discovery based on collaborative team experiences and developing life-long social networks founded on the most elemental of human relationships – trust. References 1 Katz, J.S. and Martin, B.R. (1997) What is research collaboration? Res. Policy 26, 1–18 2 Casadevall, A. and Fang, F.C. (2014) Specialized science. Infect. Immun. 82, 1355–1360 3 Huxham, C. and Vangen, S. (2000) Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world. Acad. Manage. J. 43, 1159–1175 4 Gray, B. (2008) Enhancing transdisciplinary research through collaborative leadership. Am. J. Prev. Med. 35, S124–S132 5 Masum, H. et al. (2013) Ten simple rules for cultivating open science and collaborative R&D. PLoS Comput. Biol. 9, e1003244 6 Perrino, T. et al. (2013) Advancing science through collaborative data sharing and synthesis: NIMH collaborative data synthesis for adolescent depression trials study team including. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691613491579 7 Lawler, A. (2008) University research. Steering Harvard toward collaborative science. Science 321, 190–192 8 Hand, E. (2010) ‘Big science’ spurs collaborative trend. Nature 463, 282 9 Weglicki, L.S. et al. (2005) Science and the community: a collaborative model for integration of research within the community. Ethnic. Dis. 15 (S1), 35–38 10 Rodgers, K.C. et al. (2013) A model for strengthening collaborative research capacity: illustrations from the Atlanta Clinical Translational Science Institute. Health Educ. Behav. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1090198113511815 11 Farrar, J. (2007) Global health science: a threat and an opportunity for collaborative clinical science. Nat. Immunol. 8, 1277–1279 12 Dickson, D. (1986) Europe pushes ahead with plans for joint projects: more than 60 new collaborative studies in science and technology are anticipated among 19 countries. Science 233, 152 13 Liu, C.Y. (2008) Science and the world community: funding opportunities to support international collaborative research in neurological disorders. Neurosurgery 63, 13 14 Welsh, E. et al. (2006) Post-genomic science: cross-disciplinary and large-scale collaborative research and its organizational and technological challenges for the scientific research process. Philos. Trans. A: Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 364, 1533–1549 15 Vangen, S. and Huxham, C. (2003) Nurturing collaborative relations: building trust in inter-organizational collaboration. J. Appl. Behav. Sci. 39, 5–31
485
Putting together a scientific team: collaborative science L. Garry Adams Department of Veterinary Pathobiology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-4467, USA
One of the most enjoyable parts of a science career is collaborative team experiences and developing life-long social networks. When the hypothesis being tested requires innovative efforts greater than any single laboratory, collaboration becomes an essential component for success – everyone is a stakeholder and trust is the driving force. Recently while speaking at an international scientific meeting where I presented the results generated by the combined effort of our network of six coast-to-coast collaborative laboratories, I stated that some of the most enjoyable parts of research were the team-related collaborative research experiences and successes. I also made the statement that these collaborative experiences often form the basis to continue our social interactions and develop lifelong friendships with colleagues and collaborators as we meet periodically for scientific meetings. I challenged the younger and mature scientists alike in the audience to not miss this part of their career in science as this aspect of science provides the substance for a ‘life within science’. After my presentation, graduate students, early career scientists, and seasoned investigators approached me and asked how could enjoyable science occur in the face of funding constraints that encourage competition rather than collaboration. I responded that there must be more to life in a career in scientific discovery than continuous competition, or we will not be able to attract and sustain the next generation of scientists. Virtually all of us seek some level of satisfaction and life within science. Thus, the purpose of this Science & Society commentary is to provide some basis or framework for team building and how work is accomplished while enjoying team-based collaborative science that enhances productivity in a highly competitive funding environment. As a pathologist whose research is focused on the molecular pathogenesis of infectious diseases and at the risk of offending social scientists, I provide here some personal insights on how to put together a scientific team and actually enjoy collaborative science. Team building is a multifaceted human interactive process of developing relationships while prioritizing and balancing goals and philosophies as illustrated in Figure 1. By contrast, collaborative science [1] involves Corresponding author: Adams, L.G. ([email protected]). Keywords: science; collaboration; team; trust; leadership; stakeholder; social network. 0966-842X/ ß 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2014.05.001
developing and sustaining a strong team of collaborating teams. Note in Figure 1 that trust (Box 1) is one of the principal components of team building in which effective team leadership is more about shared visions, coaching and balancing specialized scientific expertise, and systems-level generalist thinking than strict management control [2]. Team leadership skills are essential to shaping and implementing collaborative team research [3] to build trust and mutual understanding to negotiate joint goals and enhance creative discovery. Successful team leadership activities require enormous energy, commitment, skill, and continual nurturing to implement structures, processes, tools, and sociotechnology communication systems while harmonizing participants [3,4]. Based on other’s experiences and recommendations [5–7] (http://academy.asm.org/images/stories/documents/ dynamicissuesinscientificintegrity.pdf) and my own experiences spanning 46 years of team building and collaborative research in laboratories across diverse cultures and languages on four continents, the fundamental elements of enjoying a successful collaborative career in science require from the onset agreement on: (i) shared vision on the central overarching, high-level hypotheses; (ii) candid openness and transparency of rights and responsibilities; (iii) trusted partnership; (iv) mutually supporting capabilities; (v) prenegotiated coauthorships; (vi) documented prenegotiated intellectual property ownership; and finally (vii) a sense of stakeholder ownership by the collaborative research teams. The dynamic nature of interactions of the major components is nicely illustrated in Figure 2, which is focused on generating and reinforcing trust. The nature of these complex collaborative relationships will be shaped and formed by these elements such that all are required and will need to be balanced for the eventual win-win-win success of collaborating teams. For a deeper analysis of the dynamics of successful team research, the National Research Council, Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, will issue a report in 2014 of a consensus study ‘The Science of Team Science’ (http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bbcss/current projects/dbasse_080231) analyzing multiple factors influencing team dynamics with the ultimate goal to enhance the effectiveness of collaborative research in science teams, research centers, and institutes. Major funding agencies, foundations, and private enterprise are fostering the movement towards collaborative big science, centers of excellence, and grand challenges [8] at community [9], institutional, agency, national, and international levels of engagement to address national [8,10], Trends in Microbiology, September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
483
Science & Society
Trends in Microbiology September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
TRENDS in Microbiology
Figure 1. The complexity of the components of successful team building as illustrated by a word cloud of hierarchical human interactions and social networking. Note: trust, leadership, behavior, relationship, and feedback are major components of win-win-win teams. Image used with permission from Amir Zukanovic/Dreamstime.com LLC.
international, and global issues [11], impacting the ability of humankind to live in harmony with our environment. As early as 1986 [12], changes in research funding models were gradually shifting the direction of science away from competitive towards more collaborative research [13,14]. Although these scientific collaborations are focused at the highest corporate levels of governments, foundations, and private enterprise, how can these shifts in research policy facilitate building our own individual teams for collaborative science and ultimately long-term enjoyable social networks? The collaborative team-building process usually begins when principal investigators of laboratories discover the need for added knowledge or expertise from another laboratory to test high-level hypotheses, a process that may be influenced by the nature of the funding source. In other words, when the development of a shared vision on the approach to testing high-level hypotheses is agreed upon between laboratories through open and candid debate and Box 1. Trust The basic assumption is that as scientific collaboration increases so will the advancement of knowledge for the betterment of society and environment, yet successful outcomes ultimately hinge largely on the most basic of human relationships – trust. 484
How work gets done in networks Social networks
Openness
Enables
Reinforces
Trust Transparency
Knowledge sharing
Fosters
Diversity
Innovaon TRENDS in Microbiology
Figure 2. Interactive fundamental components of collaborative science built on trust. Trust only emerges when knowledge is shared and diversity of opinions is acceptable. Image used with permission from Harold Jarche (jarche.com).
Science & Society discussion, the collaboration will begin to grow towards the application of complementary capacities, performing early stage experiments, generating preliminary data, creating new ideas, coauthoring proposals, and so on. At this stage, the level of interaction is in reality a series of scientist-toscientist human relationship experiments that test the level of trust among leaders of early stage collaborating laboratories [15]. If the scientist-to-scientist trust experiments are successful, then research productivity will steadily progress and the environment will be created for solid dialog to prenegotiate and resolve authorship and intellectual property ownership. If these issues are not resolved early in the process by the leaders of the laboratories, the team never really forms and the collaboration will usually fail. As a consequence of putting together a ‘team of teams’, the sense of shared ownership begins to grow further strengthening the level of trust and productivity. From my experience, one of the best ways to accelerate the team-building process at the individual level is to exchange graduate students and postdoctoral fellows between laboratories, even for short periods of time. The trust and ownership of the shared vision will begin to emerge at all levels in the laboratories when principal investigators, laboratory managers, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students understand that in order to test high-level hypotheses each participant must be engaged to move knowledge to the next higher level. Trust and ownership cannot be implemented, but through dedicated efforts, these traits will become the culture of both the laboratory leadership and personnel. From my experience chairing almost 60 doctoral graduate student committees and guiding numerous postdoctoral fellows, once the social networks of trust and friendship are formed, they will endure and be productive and enjoyable for decades. I am fully aware that collaborative science may not be for everyone, but many successful scientists have adopted this approach to science and life. It is during this collaborative building process that genuine trust is created and strengthened to form the basis of life-long social networks and friendships that are rekindled any time collaborators meet to celebrate scientific successes or rationalize their
Trends in Microbiology September 2014, Vol. 22, No. 9
failures – a sense of life within science emerges through team building and collaborative science. So even during periods of reduced funding, I continue to encourage the scientific community to enjoy a career in scientific discovery based on collaborative team experiences and developing life-long social networks founded on the most elemental of human relationships – trust. References 1 Katz, J.S. and Martin, B.R. (1997) What is research collaboration? Res. Policy 26, 1–18 2 Casadevall, A. and Fang, F.C. (2014) Specialized science. Infect. Immun. 82, 1355–1360 3 Huxham, C. and Vangen, S. (2000) Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world. Acad. Manage. J. 43, 1159–1175 4 Gray, B. (2008) Enhancing transdisciplinary research through collaborative leadership. Am. J. Prev. Med. 35, S124–S132 5 Masum, H. et al. (2013) Ten simple rules for cultivating open science and collaborative R&D. PLoS Comput. Biol. 9, e1003244 6 Perrino, T. et al. (2013) Advancing science through collaborative data sharing and synthesis: NIMH collaborative data synthesis for adolescent depression trials study team including. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1745691613491579 7 Lawler, A. (2008) University research. Steering Harvard toward collaborative science. Science 321, 190–192 8 Hand, E. (2010) ‘Big science’ spurs collaborative trend. Nature 463, 282 9 Weglicki, L.S. et al. (2005) Science and the community: a collaborative model for integration of research within the community. Ethnic. Dis. 15 (S1), 35–38 10 Rodgers, K.C. et al. (2013) A model for strengthening collaborative research capacity: illustrations from the Atlanta Clinical Translational Science Institute. Health Educ. Behav. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1090198113511815 11 Farrar, J. (2007) Global health science: a threat and an opportunity for collaborative clinical science. Nat. Immunol. 8, 1277–1279 12 Dickson, D. (1986) Europe pushes ahead with plans for joint projects: more than 60 new collaborative studies in science and technology are anticipated among 19 countries. Science 233, 152 13 Liu, C.Y. (2008) Science and the world community: funding opportunities to support international collaborative research in neurological disorders. Neurosurgery 63, 13 14 Welsh, E. et al. (2006) Post-genomic science: cross-disciplinary and large-scale collaborative research and its organizational and technological challenges for the scientific research process. Philos. Trans. A: Math. Phys. Eng. Sci. 364, 1533–1549 15 Vangen, S. and Huxham, C. (2003) Nurturing collaborative relations: building trust in inter-organizational collaboration. J. Appl. Behav. Sci. 39, 5–31
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