Science of team science

Better understanding trust

By Gabriele Bammer.

gabriele-bammer_nov-2021
Gabriele Bammer (biography)

Trust is regarded as essential for effective teamwork and stakeholder engagement, so how can we better understand trust? How can that understanding underpin more effective action in establishing trust and in remedying loss of trust?

I use ideas about trust developed by Piotr Sztompka (1999) to reflect on trust in teamwork and in stakeholder engagement in research projects. Stakeholder engagement is divided into two broad types:

  • engagement with those affected by the problem being researched, and
  • engagement with those in a position to act on the problem; they are often decision makers.

Sztompka provides a useful definition of trust (p. 25) as:
“a bet about the future contingent actions of others.”

Trust consists of beliefs or specific expectations about others which influence how we act, what Sztompka calls “commitment through action” (p. 26).

Read more

Transforming experts into team science leaders

By Gemma Jiang.

gemma-jiang
Gemma Jiang (biography)

Are you transitioning from a subject matter expert to a team leader? What is key to leadership? What challenges are you likely to confront? What questions will you need to address?

Defining leadership

Leadership is about influencing change among a collective of people, not about titles or top-down decision-making.

Influencing change

Change is an enduring and accelerating force, from the actions of ancient mythological heroes to the demands of our rapidly evolving VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world. Effective leadership bridges deep personal transformation and profound organizational change, guiding individuals and institutions through transitions and innovations.

Influencing a collective

Read more

Team science is an integral competency for the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator Program

By L. Michelle Bennett, Edgar Cardenas and Michael O’Rourke

authors_l-michelle-bennett_edgar-cardenas_michael-orourke
1. L. Michelle Bennett (biography)
2. Edgar Cardenas (biography)
3. Michael O’Rourke (biography)

What roles do research and development agencies have in actively preparing research teams to engage productively in collaborative research? Is it enough to require that teams engaging in funded research prepare themselves to collaborate effectively?

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator Program was launched in 2019 to fast track the development of ideas into real-world applications and solutions intended to have substantive societal and economic impact. Building upon basic research and discovery and using a convergent approach, the program accelerates use-inspired research toward impact by funding multidisciplinary teams from a wide range of disciplines and sectors to solve complex societal and economic challenges.

Read more

Applying human-centered design to virtual conference planning

By Kristine Glauber, Ben Miller and Christine Ogilvie Hendren

authors_kristine-glauber_ben-miller_christine-ogilvie-hendren
1. Kristine Glauber (biography)
2. Ben Miller (biography)
3. Christine Ogilvie Hendren (biography)

What is needed to envision and create a virtual conference at which attendees have direct agency in execution of customized, richly interactive sessions?

We share three guideposts from a human-centered design framework in recasting the 11th Annual International Science of Team Science Conference from a face-to-face to a virtual meeting after the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Develop your design principle

Develop your goals for the meeting overall and each individual conference element.These can be referenced when making decisions about how to accomplish a particular task. By identifying the specific goals for your event at the beginning, you can tailor the interactions to meet your attendees’ needs.

Read more

Evolution of hot topics in team science / 团队科学中热点主题的演变

By Ying Huang, Ruinan Li, Yashan Li and Lin Zhang

A Chinese version of this post is available

authors_ying-huang_ruinan-li_yashan-li_lin-zhang
1. Ying Huang (biography)
2. Ruinan Li (biography)
3. Yashan Li (biography)
4. Lin Zhang (biography

What are the research hotspots in the Science of Team Science (SciTS) field? How have they evolved in the last decade?

We used conference programs from the annual International Science of Team Science (INSciTS) conferences held between 2010-2019 and the CorTexT Platform (https://www.cortext.net/) to select the top terms used with high frequency in the 852 titles and abstracts.

High-frequency terms and their evolution

The top 25 terms and their evolution are shown in Figure 1: evaluation / assessment (89 mentions), team science training (63), leadership (31), communication (30), curriculum (14),community (29), funding (13), mixed methods (13), model (13), Toolbox Project / Toolbox Dialogue Initiative (13), Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) (11), graduate students (11), networks (26), education (20), tools (20), productivity (16), bibliometrics (19), framework (14), gender (11), readiness (8), distributed collaboration (7), multi-team systems (7), research network tools (8), team performance (7), multiple levels (5).

Read more

What lessons for improving interdisciplinary collaboration emerged from the 2019 Science of Team Science conference?

By Julie Thompson Klein and Ben Miller

authors_julie-thompson-klein_ben-miller
1. Julie Thompson Klein’s biography
2. Ben Miller (biography)

Six lessons emerged from the seven plenary panels at the May 2019 Science of Team Science conference hosted by Michigan State University in the US.

1. Understanding the nature of team science is crucial to monitoring team behavior, including managing conflict, diverse voices, and strong leadership.

The Science of Groups and Teams plenary panel affirmed one approach alone is not sufficient. It featured perspectives from psychology, management, and organizational behavior in two regional research institutions, the University of Michigan and Michigan State University.

2. Networking and collaboration increase access to pertinent expertise and skills, equipment, and other resources including funding, relevant techniques, education and training, visibility and recognition.

Read more

Toolboxes as learning aids for dealing with complex problems

By Stefan Hilser

Stefan Hilser (biography)

How can toolboxes more effectively support those learning to deal with complex societal and environmental problems, especially novices such as PhD students and early career researchers?

In this blog post, I briefly describe four toolboxes and assess them for their potential to assist learning processes. My main aim is to open a discussion about the value of the four toolboxes and how they could better help novices.

Before describing the toolboxes, I outline the learning processes I have in mind, especially the perspective of legitimate peripheral participation.

Read more

What can interdisciplinary collaborations learn from the science of team science?

suzi-spitzer
Suzi Spitzer (biography)

By Suzi Spitzer

How can we improve interdisciplinary collaborations? There are many lessons to be learned from the Science of Team Science. The following ten lessons summarize many of the ideas that were shared at the International Science of Team Science Conference in Galveston, Texas, in May 2018.

1. Team up with the right people
On the most basic level, scientists working on teams should be willing to integrate their thoughts with their teammates’ ideas. Participants should also possess a variety of social skills, such as negotiation and social perceptiveness. The most successful teams also encompass a moderate degree of deep-level diversity (values, perspectives, cognitive styles) and include women in leadership roles.

Read more

Creating community around the Science of Team Science

By Stephen M. Fiore

Stephen M. Fiore (biography)

How can we create new academic communities? I provide lessons from building the Science of Team Science (SciTS), a rapidly growing cross-disciplinary field of study. SciTS works to build an evidence-base and to develop translational applications to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of team-based research.

I particularly draw lessons from the recent 8th annual conference attended by approximately 200 people. The conference aimed to:

  • disseminate the current state of knowledge in the SciTS field along with applications for enhancing team science;
  • provide opportunities to discuss future directions for advancing SciTS to improve the global scientific enterprise; and,
  • provide opportunities for interaction amongst a diverse group of stakeholders, including thought leaders in the SciTS field, scientists engaged in team-based research, institutional leaders who promote collaborative research, policymakers, and federal agency representatives.

Read more

Team science glossary

By Sawsan Khuri and Stefan Wuchty

authors_sawsan-khuri_stefan-wuchty
1. Sawsan Khuri (biography)
2. Stefan Wuchty (biography)

As team science gains momentum, we present this glossary to standardize definitions for the most frequently used terms and phrases in the science of team science literature, and to serve as a reference point for newcomers to the field. Source material is provided where possible.

Co-authorship
When team members are given due credit by co-authoring publications from the project. There are various co-authorship models, some are dependent on disciplinary or departmental practices, and some are negotiable. This is an issue that needs to be clarified and documented very early on in a collaborative effort (Bennet et al., 2010).

Collaboration, or Collaborative project
When two or more scientists work together on a project that is expected to end with a joint publication, and maybe even a grant proposal for more collaborations.

Read more

Integration – Part 2: The “how”

By Julie Thompson Klein

i2s-logo_small
Julie Thompson Klein’s biography

The “how” of integration focuses on pragmatics of process, with emphasis on methods. Toward that end, following the part 1 blog post on the “what” of integration, this blog post presents insights from major resources, with emphasis on collaborative research by teams.

Some widely used methods are well-known theories, for example general systems. Others are practiced in particular domains, such as integrated environmental assessment. Some utilize technologies, for example computer synthesis of data. And others, such as dialogue methods, target communication processes.

Read more

Looking over the horizon for team effectiveness

By Stephen M. Fiore

Stephen M. Fiore (biography)

How can we better understand how to improve team effectiveness, as well as help society more broadly? In the last decade, there has been a great deal of growth of interdisciplinary research on teams, thanks to organizations like the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research and the developing field of the Science of Team Science.

New areas

The study of teams has long been making important contributions to business organizations, the military, and healthcare and is now branching out to scientific research teams, cyber security teams, and even spaceflight teams. Each of these domains is of significant societal relevance for the 21st century. They represent important topics for what is called use-inspired basic science.

Read more