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A narrative guide to help scientists improve their collaboration techniques and build trusting relationships with their research teams.The days of scientists conducting solitary inquiries in isolated labs are effectively over, with most researchers instead collaborating in cross-functional teams. In addition to mastering the technical skills necessary in their respective fields, scientists must now learn strategies for better communication and relationship building to succeed in reaching their research goals. In Scientific Collaboration, biosecurity researcher and animal disease ecologist Jeanne M. Fair shares exciting—and occasionally cringeworthy—true stories of scientists working together. These examples provide an approachable way to introduce the principles crucial to effective scientific collaboration.From the global community of scientists measuring sea-ice decline to cooperative private-public sector investigations of harrowing virus outbreaks, the experiences described demonstrate how scientists can rise to meet challenges together. Fair explains how to foster the principles of community, integrity, loyalty, communication, and compassion among teams. Scientists adopting and applying these principles will improve communication and trust among team members while they work toward the common goal of discovery.Highlighting multidisciplinary research teams that have achieved transformational breakthroughs as well as stories of tough lessons learned, Scientific Collaboration provides a foundation for increasing research productivity while bringing more fun into the collaborative process. This book will appeal to all scientists and team leaders in this new scientific world, wherein the most important breakthroughs happen through cooperation, combined effort, and mutual trust.

This book presents the Framework Knowledge Acquisition Design, indicated for the development of scientific and technological research that demand the dialogue of academic and non-academic researchers for the configuration of the unit of knowledge, established in a transdisciplinary methodology of co-production in a diachronic study of the main theoretical frameworks, methodological and contextual, and with the presentation of selected frameworks of transdisciplinary co-production. The work can be classified both as a reference work in Transdisciplinary Research Methodology and as a textbook to guide the Transdisciplinary Coproduction in the context of innovation and organizational and social development. The constituent elements of the work that make it a reference work in Research Methodology are the theoretical foundations on the unity of knowledge, on the issue of transdisciplinary and on co-production, in a trajectory that begins with the first thinkers of the renaissance (and its basis in the philosophy of classical antiquity) addressing contemporaneity, supported by the main thinkers of transdisciplinary and integrative research. The constituent elements of the work that make it a textbook is the presentation of the main conceptual frameworks on the partnership between academic and non-academic actors (public and private) for the co-production of scientific knowledge, which will be the basis for the presentation of a new method that is sufficiently robust to accommodate from scientific initiation to complex, deep and substantial doctoral studies. Genuine transdisciplinary research aims to coordinate different bodies of knowledge, after identifying gaps in the science, technology and society tripod filling these gaps with appropriate scientific methodology and theoretical references. It is the recognition that specialized knowledge bases are dispersed in the very heterogeneity of reality and that, therefore, only an integrative approach will be able to capture essential features of the context in which the problem is inserted. It is to bring to the scientific framework relevant social problems that need a solution and lead to the relevant problems that need a solution, wherever they are, science. In this context, the involvement of non-academic actors in the disciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary continuum advances towards transdisciplinary research, intensifying the cooperation and integration of various fields of knowledge in solving the research problem. Transdisciplinary, in a broad sense, can be described like a movement as the shift from fragmentation to relationality, from unity to the integrative process, from situated homogeneity to heterogeneity, from linearity to non-linearity, from simplicity to complexity, from universality to practices, from isolation to collaboration and cooperation. The appreciation and increase of these forms of interaction in search of the unity of knowledge beckon a new form of articulation between society and academia, especially for conducting scientific research, fostering new partnerships between university and society. This book brings the fundamentals of the changes that have become necessary to transcend and integrate disciplinary paradigms and the theoretical and methodological references for the realization of scientific researches that consider this scenario, including the presentation of a robust new conceptual framework for academic research in the field the integration engineering and knowledge governance.

Collaboration is a defining feature of 21st-century research, with more and more people routinely traversing formal disciplinary boundaries in the quest for fundamental and applied scientific discovery – even when it takes them beyond their core domain knowledge and expertise. This book takes a practical approach to support researchers in their collaborative practice. This book will help readers to overcome common barriers to research collaboration, preparing them to form high-quality collaborations within a supportive organisational culture. Suitable for researchers at all levels, this book serves a global audience. It is as relevant for PhD students and postdoctoral scientists as it is to senior research managers working across academia, government agencies and industry. It also provides an invaluable reference for key stakeholders in the wider ecosystem supporting and facilitating research and innovation.Key Features:Timeliness and relevance for 21st-century research teamsSuitable for researchers in all disciplines and at all career stages – i.e. PhD student through to senior research managementBy authors with unique real-world experience of facilitating and supporting research collaborationsAiming to give readers tools and approaches that they can use and apply to develop their own research practice/behaviours.

Interdisciplinarity has become a buzzword in academia, as research universities funnel their financial resources toward collaborations between faculty in different disciplines. In theory, interdisciplinary collaboration breaks down artificial divisions between different departments, allowing more innovative and sophisticated research to flourish. But does it actually work this way in practice? Investigating Interdisciplinary Collaboration puts the common beliefs about such research to the test, using empirical data gathered by scholars from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The book's contributors critically interrogate the assumptions underlying the fervor for interdisciplinarity. Their attentive scholarship reveals how, for all its potential benefits, interdisciplinary collaboration is neither immune to academia's status hierarchies, nor a simple antidote to the alleged shortcomings of disciplinary study. Chapter 10 is available Open Access here (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK395883)

This book is for students and researchers across the social sciences who are planning, conducting and disseminating research on sustainability-related issues. Real-world sustainability problems cross many boundaries, and this is the first book to guide students and practitioners through the practical and theoretical challenges of doing interdisciplinary research in this vital and emerging area. Researching Sustainability contains many in-depth,'hands on'accounts by expert contributors, providing real-life examples and lessons that can be put to use immediately. Coverage includes: the general challenges that sustainability presents to researchers, including frictions between sustainability and scientific tradition; complexity; research paradigms; interdisciplinarity; social-environmental interactions; and ethical concerns. a host of social science based research methods and approaches. Each chapter presents a different method; its challenges and suitability for different situations; an in-depth example of the method in action; insights and lessons. dissemination of sustainability research findings, including influencing policy, communicating with school children and working with the media. The book concludes with a critical synthesis of issues and methods examined in the book together with a discussion of future research pathways. This book is an essential tool for students, researchers and practitioners in planning, implementing and evaluating their sustainability research.

A proposal for a new framework for fostering collaborations across disciplines, addressing both theory and practical applications.Cross-disciplinary collaboration increasingly characterizes today's science and engineering research. The problems and opportunities facing society do not come neatly sorted by discipline. Difficulties arise when researchers from disciplines as different as engineering and the humanities work together and find that they speak largely different languages. This book explores a new framework for fostering collaborations among existing disciplines and expertise communities. The framework unites two ideas to emerge from recent work in STS: trading zones, in which scientific subcultures, each with its own language, develop the equivalents of pidgin and creole; and interactional expertise, in which experts learn to use the language of another research community in ways that are indistinguishable from expert practitioners of that community. A trading zone can gradually become a new area of expertise, facilitated by interactional expertise and involving negotiations over boundary objects (objects represented in different ways by different participants). The volume describes applications of the framework to service science, business strategy, environmental management, education, and practical ethics. One detailed case study focuses on attempts to create trading zones that would help prevent marine bycatch; another investigates trading zones formed to market the female condom to women in Africa; another describes how humanists embedded in a nanotechnology laboratory gained interactional expertise, resulting in improved research results for both humanists and nanoscientists.ContributorsBrad Allenby, Donna T. Chen, Harry Collins, Robert Evans, Erik Fisher, Peter Galison, Michael E. Gorman, Lynn Isabella, Lekelia D. Jenkins, Mary Ann Leeper, Roop L. Mahajan, Matthew M. Mehalik, Ann E. Mills, Bolko von Oetinger, Elizabeth Powell, Mary V. Rorty, Jeff Shrager, Jim Spohrer, Patricia H. Werhane

From climate change to GM foods, we are increasingly confronted with complex, interconnected social and environmental problems that span disciplines, knowledge bases and value systems. This book offers a transdisciplinary, open approach for those working towards resolving these'wicked'problems and highlights the crucial role of this'transdisciplinary imagination'in addressing the shift to sustainable futures. Tackling Wicked Problems provides readers with a framework and practical examples that will guide the design and conduct of their own open-ended enquiries. In this approach, academic disciplines are combined with personal, local and strategic understanding and researchers are required to recognise multiple knowledge cultures, accept the inevitability of uncertainty, and clarify their own and others'ethical positions. The authors then comment on fifteen practical examples of how researchers have engaged with the opportunities and challenges of conducting transdisciplinary inquiries. The book gives those who are grappling with complex problems innovative methods of inquiry that will allow them to work collaboratively towards long-term solutions.

Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research examines current interdisciplinary research efforts and recommends ways to stimulate and support such research. Advances in science and engineering increasingly require the collaboration of scholars from various fields. This shift is driven by the need to address complex problems that cut across traditional disciplines, and the capacity of new technologies to both transform existing disciplines and generate new ones. At the same time, however, interdisciplinary research can be impeded by policies on hiring, promotion, tenure, proposal review, and resource allocation that favor traditional disciplines. This report identifies steps that researchers, teachers, students, institutions, funding organizations, and disciplinary societies can take to more effectively conduct, facilitate, and evaluate interdisciplinary research programs and projects. Throughout the report key concepts are illustrated with case studies and results of the committee's surveys of individual researchers and university provosts.