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Quotes from this page are from a video transcript of experts presenting their viewpoint on team science incentives and challenges for an Early Career Investigator to keep in mind.
Additional expert information is available in The Science of Team Science (Module 1, Research Resource) and the Module 1 Library.
You'll have access to more information because you'll work with people who have different knowledge bases.
"So one of the great benefits of team science is that it allows an individual to transcend their own limitations to seek only a narrow slice of science, to seeing a much broader piece of science. By [being] able to draw on more new raw material, they're able to make more combinations and potentially out of those combinations, something will hit big.
So team science is really about how do you access more knowledge and how to you put it together in new and different ways to create the next big innovation, in a way that the individual scientist acting on their own, seeing only their myopic part of the scientific world, can no longer do."
—Brian Uzzi, PhD, Northwestern University: Management and Organizations, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences and Co-Director, Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems
It may be difficult to prioritize personal accomplishments with effective collaboration.
"There’s been a culture change that’s happening that I think [has] been impacting junior faculty [differently] across the country and probably across the world. So the traditional concern for junior faculty members engaging in a team science endeavor is that the question of are they getting enough publications, are they getting enough first author publications, are they having an opportunity to lead subsequent grants, is the burden of additional meetings that need to happen creating a barrier, and I think part of that depends on the degree of sophistication and sort of vision that the context that they’re in has, that the institution that they’re in has, and I think that relates for instance to tenure promotion policies the institution has.
If the tenure and promotion policies articulate the importance of these types of endeavors, that the fact that interdisciplinary science is necessary, important for not only achieving the science, but the institution getting the funding that they want, [then] I think that is then supportive of the junior faculty and moving through. There are much more traditional environments that are not taking into consideration the role the junior faculty are playing, the scientific advances they are making, and they’re not coming up with ways to creatively review the contribution that’s being made and they’re relying on traditional publication counts or authorship order and these sorts of things.
Now, although I talk about the number of publications, what we’re seeing is that as these team science endeavors mature in that people are understanding better how to do these, how to coordinate the team science endeavors, we’re seeing a quicker trajectory with publications, we’re seeing more publications.
I think this is also a cultural thing. The more time that passes, and the more the broader scientific community recognizes the importance of interdisciplinary science, and that’s not to say that uni-disciplinary science is not important because it absolutely is, you need a mature scientific field in order to then merge it with another, so to speak. But that until there are adequate venues for this interdisciplinary work to be published in, then that’s going to be a barrier for those who are working in these kind of environments, to be able to publish their work.
So in some scientific areas, where they’re more mature or more cutting edge, or sort of the fields themselves have recognized the importance of the interdisciplinary nature, then there’s more publication venues, that’s allowing the junior faculty to get more publications out.
There’s also structural things, for instance, from the agency perspective. When we construct these large center initiatives, there’s a deliberate effort to allow not only training for junior faculty but also mechanisms for junior faculty to be getting pilot funding, so to be getting grants within the context of this, which is a specific effort on our part to facilitate their success."
—Kara Hall, PhD, National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute, Program Officer, Behavioral Research Program
The incentive structure at many institutions primarily rewards individual accomplishments.
"At the institutional level, the incentive structure hasn’t caught up with the development of collaboration in team science. So that the criteria by which people’s work is assessed and evaluated doesn’t necessarily reward working in teams in the way in which individual scientists need it so they can be confident at that pursuing their individual career advancement and pursuing team science activities are not at odds with one another.
I think we hear a lot from the younger scientists that they’re really torn. Because they feel they’re in a kind of double-bind situation in which they can’t possibly please both sets of expectations that are imposed upon them."
—Howard Gadlin, PhD, National Institutes of Health: Ombudsman and Director of the Center for Cooperative Resolution; Authoring Team Science Field Guide with Michelle Bennett
The potential for innovation is greater on an interdisciplinary team due to diverse perspectives and ideas
"What I would say [is that] for senior investigators, the incentives are quite enormous. The possibility of working with other colleagues who are experts in different fields or associated fields, the ability to work together to generate results or achieve accomplishments that there’s no way you could do alone in your own laboratory or even with a smaller set of people that you work with. The team setting provides resources, expertise, access to I think approaches that you wouldn’t be able to do very easily otherwise.
And the outcome and the impact of the results from those approaches or studies can really have a lot of impact, they can really begin to make a difference in people’s lives, or in how science gets done, the different things that can come out of it such as in areas of drug development or personalized medicine that are so very important and that are really interesting and high profile issues today.
When we talk about the junior investigator, I don’t think that some of the incentives are so different. In terms of the possibility, but I think there are many more challenges associated with trying to incentivize team science at the junior level.
And I guess what I mean by that is that at a junior level, one is faced with having to secure tenure in X number of years. So they’re pretty much put on a clock and then they set the timer when you walk in the door and by X number of years later typically four or five, you really need to start thinking about what paradigms have I shifted? How have I demonstrated my independence? How have I contributed to my research field? How many publications do I have? How many trainees have I trained? It’s very self-focused, very individualized, especially in the biomedical sciences.
And so, when one comes to the culmination of the tenure process, how are they going to be evaluated for tenure? And if there are no provisions for evaluating that individual for their contributions to a team, whether they’ve set up a team, participated in a team, it makes it very difficult to encourage them to participate in a team when they have to shift a paradigm in their own field or be recognized internationally for their own independent work."
—L. Michelle Bennett, PhD, National Institutes of Health: Deputy Director, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute; Authoring Team Science Field Guide with Howard Gadlin
In "Enhancing Transdisciplinary Research Through Collaborative Leadership" Gray (2008) asserts appropriate leadership enhances the overall team effectiveness and satisfaction, and leadership tasks may be grouped into three main categories: cognitive, structural, and processual.
Read each node to learn how focusing on different tasks may uniquely contribute to your success as a team leader.
Ensure a shared vision and use your judgment to determine whom to invite to the project, which project is most promising, and how to deploy resources in the most logical manner
Conduct a short, intensive kick-off meeting to introduce members and allow them to learn more about each others' assumptions and backgrounds. This meeting could be a day-long retreat or similar team building activity
Set up a meeting with inter- and extra-institutional contacts who may be invaluable sources information as the project progresses. In this manner, you will act as a broker who can identify the "bridges" between people, where others may only see the holes
Identify and acquire supplemental funding- perhaps from another team member's home institution--to supplement the research personnel, lab, or related project costs prior to pursuing extramural funding
Mediate conflicts between team members as they arise (see Room 3 for more information on managing conflict). Call another in-person team meeting to check in and allow concerns to be heard in a non-confrontational environment.
Secure a buy-in from other team members' institutions, seeking their pledge of support for the project and collaboration with your institution. For example, get in touch with a department head at their institution.
Noshir Contracter, PhD, explains what a leader should keep in mind when selecting individuals for a team. Additional expert information is available in The Science of Team Science (Module 1, Research Resource) and the Module 1 Library.
“I think one has to recognize that teams are made up of humans. And in addition to the logical expectations of the project, one has to understand a certain chemistry that needs to be there in a team to be successful. And so there are several incentives that one has to appreciate and recognize when assembling a team together. It is not sufficient as it might seem, that if you need a particular project to do things in theory X and Y, or in methodology A and B, that all you need to do is put together somebody who has the skill sets for X Y, or A or B, you need to understand the dynamics of the individuals. You need to make sure that every member of the team recognizes that they too are benefiting from, as well as contributing to, whatever is being advanced as part of that.”
—Noshir Contractor, PhD, Northwestern University: Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences, Communication Studies, and Management and Organizations
Nice work so far! You've already built your team, so now you're ready to choose a funding opportunity that complements the research initiative. Many researchers feel inclined to choose a funding mechanism first, and then assemble their team to fit the funding mechanism.
Experts on team science agree, however, that the ideal approach is to build your team first, then let the science and your team of scientists drive everything else that follows including the selection of an appropriate funding mechanism.
You had a wide range of choices, and narrowed down opportunities to an:
After doing more research, you found that the NIH R01 mechanism allows for a larger scope, which is needed in this case to accommodate the clinical science initiative you are proposing. It can also support and help foster an interdisciplinary, team effort.
Both the R03 and R21 were too small either in time or funding for this initiative. The National Scientist Development award is similar in scope to the NIH K-series award mechanism, and is specifically geared toward a researcher just beginning their career.
Prior to submitting your proposal, you are likely to have many questions about the processs, especially if you have limited experience with the funding agency or mechanism beforehand.
Read each node for helpful tips about proposal preparation and submission.
Contact the Program Officer at the funding agency well in advance of writing or submitting the proposal. For specific details and steps to build a solid relationship with the funder, visit Module 2: Behavioral Team Science Wing and Module 3: Biomedical Team Science Wing. RDOs have a particular skill set and an expertise for reading the fine print on funding opportunity announcements, which complements the PI's scientific expertise. It allows the PI to focus on the science as much as possible.
Familiarize the team with the materials that need to be submitted, including those required for the IRB review. IRB meetings are often held only once per month, so PIs need to be timely with submitting materials so they can be reviewed on time.
Because the investigator’s institution submits the proposal on their behalf to the funding agency, there will be internal deadlines and requirements to consider before the proposal even reaches the agency. Communicate openly and frequently with your team about what is completed and what still needs to be done to meet requirements. Keep in mind that the NIH grant submission deadline doesn’t take into account the internal submission timeline set by your home institution (this may be a week or more in advance of NIH’s deadline).
Narrator: You've submitted the proposal and will continue to work to establish team trust and healthy communication patterns for the long haul. Collaborators get exposed to the values and assumptions of their colleagues all the time, but this kind of exposure is usually uncoordinated and often fragmented. The "Toolbox" Approach is designed to provide structure for group discussion and allow team members to connect their own assumptions with those of others. Research indicates that this process can effectively help identify potential team barriers, improve cohesion, and reduce the risk of dominance of a single member or disciplinary perspective on the team. Sure, it requires an investment of time to use a tool like this upfront. It might take several hours or up to a whole day. But if you consider the fact that you're embarking on a collaboration that will last 5 or more years, that investment will have plenty of opportunity to pay dividends in time saved and value added.
To build team trust and healthy communication patterns, the team is going to implement the "Toolbox" approach (Eigenbrode et al., 2007).
Read each node to learn more about the "Toolbox" approach to team building.
The approach aids interdisciplinary research, acting as a communication discovery mechanism for collaborators who have many different approaches to investigating and understanding the world.
Participants typically answer a systematic set of questions that frame elements of a scientist's research perspective and structure the discussion that follows, rather than letting this kind of communication between investigators happen accidentally or sporadically.
Participants review core questions, rank and reflect on individual responses to questions from his/her discipline perspective, then meet as a group to discuss the questions in any order.
Groups should meet in a workshop or roundtable setting with an introduction by a facilitator and the discussion should be recorded for re-examination.
Core questions are drawn from six categories: Motivation, Methodology, Confirmation, Objectivity, Values, and Reductionsim-emergence. Some questions used in the questionnaire (and their corresponding category) are as follows:
Reference: Eigenbrode, S.D., O'Rourke, M., Wulfhorst, J.D, Althoff, D.M., Goldberg, C.S., Merill, K. Morse, W., Nielsen-Pincus, M., Stephens, J., Winowiecki, L. et. al (2007). Employing philosophical dialogue in collaborative science. Bioscience, 57, 55-64.
When prioritizing critique responses, you do not necessarily need to rank changes in order of importance (because you should treat all responses as equally important), but rather in the order you will address them.
Regardless of the type of conflict you encounter, the same communication processes apply as you work within your team to resolve differences or discuss grievances. There are two approaches, but they are not created equally!
Dialogue is more productive than debate. This approach is collaborative by nature because the goal is to find common ground and approach conflicts with an open mind. This approach includes listening to other sides for meaning, re-examining your assumptions along the way, and trying to reach a better solution through conversation.
One strategy for encouraging dialogue is to practice re-stating in your own words what is said by another team member. This helps team members feel heard, and gives people an opportunity to course correct when there are misunderstandings.
This approach can be construed as confrontational. The goal of this approach is often to win the argument; participants enter a debate with a close-minded attitude and listen to the other side to find flaws. In this mode, it is natural to want to defend your assumptions automatically, by countering other viewpoint(s).
When removing a senior collaborator from a grant because his/her aspect of the proposal is no longer necessary, it's best to schedule an in-person meeting, and not to email the collaborator about this issue. It's also a good idea to ask the senior investigator to stay on the grant as a consultant at zero or near zero effort, and this message will be best delivered in person.
Initially, a face-to-face discussion may feel uncomfortable or unpleasant. Traveling to the senior investigator's office will take more time and energy than sending an e-mail. Even so, there may be unfavorable consequences to taking the easy way out.
E-mailing runs the risk of alienating a potential asset on the project or ruining a professional relationship for good. If you hope to work with this colleague again in the future, having a face-to-face meeting is worth the added effort and discomfort. Maintaining a healthy working relationship with the senior investigator may be helpful on future projects as well.
Some collaborators are not comfortable speaking up in group settings where authorship and attributions about relative contribution are being discussed. Thus, misattributions about relative contribution can often negatively affect introverted team members more than others. Teams should consider one-on-one conversations to facilitate discussion and prevent misattributions.
Read the nodes below to further explore some reasons why misattributions related to contribution are so common and some best practices to help offset this problem.
Based on Ross and Sicoly’s 1979 study, group members commonly overestimate their contributions to a joint product because of two factors:
Overestimating our own contributions is a natural tendency. To counteract this tendency, teams should:
As you make study presentations, consider the following practices to ensure your co-authors and collaborators are appropriately acknowledged and credited in the presentation itself. Follow these key practices:
Narrator: As the leader of your team, it's your responsibility to monitor the motivation levels of the people working in your lab. You're troubled to notice that your team of graduate students has recently been producing less research, and appear distracted and demoralized on the job. How should you motivate them?
Read ineffective and effectives practices for motivating the team to improve below.
Giving graduate students the opportunity to present work on behalf of the lab, write and present abstracts, and speak at conferences will give them a more active role in the project and a reason to feel their contributions matter. Having more responsibility and visibility in their daily tasks will help them re-invest in the project and consequently, have more ownership and produce better work.
Doing the work for them or expressing disappointment is not likely to increase team motivation. Conversations about motivation and performance are sensitive subjects, so exercise caution when broaching them. Always try to find positive ways to increase participation before expressing disappointment or issuing ultimatums.
When monitoring the motivation levels of your team, you may find that when some team members are asked to change their behavior, they enact the exact behaviors they have been asked to refrain from. They may even attempt to sabotage the project.
What motivates group members to behave this way? Brehm & Brehm (1981) suggest this tendency is a reaction to feeling overly controlled or pushed around on the team. Read the nodes below to learn more about reactance theory.
Reactance is an aversive affective reaction in response to regulations or impositions that individuals feel impinge on their freedom (Brehm, 1966, Brehm & Brehm, 1981).
Individuals often show "boomerang effects" in which they become more inclined to enact the very behavior that was restricted as a way to restore autonomy (Brehm, 1966). The feeling that we are being controlled may lead to a deeper decline in motivation and even, a decline in wanting the team to succeed. Recent evidence suggests that this can often happen nonconsciously, or outside the person's awareness. Reactance can be especially problematic for teams, where motivation is a key factor of success.
Overly controlling leaders may inherently undermine the team's efforts and cause collaborator performance to slip. To bypass the damaging effects of reactance, leaders should:
Reference: Brehm, J. W., & Brehm, S. S. (1981). Psychological reactance: A theory of freedom and control. New York: Academic Press.
Holly Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, explains what a leader can do to help facilitate communication on the team.
“I just try to encourage, up front, and it's reviewed well at the funding agencies, to have a communication: a data sharing plan, a data dissemination or information dissemination plan right from the get-go. It doesn't mean that you can't drift from it, but the fact that you have a plan, and everybody is aware of what that plan is, will really help them facilitate the communication".
—Holly Falk Krzesinski, PhD, Northwestern University: Research Assistant Professor and Director, Research Team Support, Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute, Feinberg School of Medicine; Chair, Annual International Science of Team Science Conference
Communication is better facilitated if the team has a clear plan about what technology they will use during the project. Technology that enhances team efforts by supporting communication and data-sharing includes:
A leader can facilitate communication on his/her team by having a clear data sharing and dissemination plan from the start. All team members should be aware of the plan, so they can utilize it.
Reference: Olson, G.M., and Olson, J.S. (2000). Distance Matters. Human-Computer Interaction 15, 139-178.
Institutions use a number of characteristics to determine tenure and promotion standards. Traditional evaluations focus on individual accomplishments, while newer evaluations consider more collaborative accomplishments made within an interdisciplinary setting. Review each column to see examples of each.