In the era of ’team science’, will you get fair recognition?

The rise of ‘Team Science’ – collaborative research done in large and often multidisciplinary groups – is putting the spotlight on the challenges of ensuring an even playing field for researchers when it comes to recognition of their role.

Team science, was recently defined by an Academy of Medical Sciences' report Improving recognition of team science contributions in biomedical research careers as ‘two or more principle investigator-led groups that collaborate to produce a publication or other research output’. Fifty years ago it was not unusual for a research paper to have only one or perhaps two authors. Looking at a copy of Nature published fifty years ago (30th April 1966) I found it contained 21 articles – 8 of which had one author and 7 of which had two.

By comparison, any recent issue has fewer articles, they are much longer and they all have multiple authors. This is happening across science, it is not an isolated example but a representation of a trend in the vast majority of publications. Publication output is still seen as shorthand for scientific productivity and the increase in collaborative research has driven the development of the new custom of ‘first or last co-authorship’¹,² to try and better recognise the input of many authors to the work. Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of team science is the rise in ‘mega’ authorships stemming from the genomics revolution and typical of recent genomic association studies which list not people, but consortiums of multiple individuals in their author list³,?.

[caption id="attachment_54050" align="alignnone" width="620"] Collaboration in science has risen from one or two authors on a paper to whole labs at a university.[/caption]

Team science is clearly good for science, but we must ensure it also benefits researchers. The Academy's report found that in its present form, team science efforts are susceptible to cause career development issues that could undermine the popularity of these ventures among early career researchers. These were found to be unrelated to the size of the team or whether it involved individual groups within the same or geographically distinct institutions. The main challenge for individual researchers participating in team science was overwhelmingly identified in gaining recognition for their contributions. Employers, funders, publishers and researchers themselves agreed that these concerns arise because career development currently relies on a research(er) assessment culture that is based upon two ‘currencies’ above all else: first and last author position on publications and ‘lead Principal Investigator (PI)’ status on grants.

Researchers at all stages of their career also reported concerns that many people whose roles are critical to team science are not recognised appropriately and have no clear career path ahead of them, which might result in them leaving the academic world. These are groups of individuals with skills critical to many large scale studies, skills specialists such as bioinformaticians?, clinical trial managers, statisticians and pathologists who rarely achieve the accolade of ‘first authorship’. Team science is not only likely to become increasingly common, but increasingly necessary, and therefore it needs to be an attractive option for researchers. This will happen only through a culture change and new ways of working that value outputs beyond just scientific publications, that merit equitable recognition e.g. clinical collections, genomic, proteomic and digital assets?. The Academy's report highlighted many practices common in research today that are no longer fit for purpose in an increasingly collaborative research environment. To start, research outputs need to be open, transparent and standardised and both funders and employers should update their criteria for career progression and grant awards.

For scientists to perform at their best in team science and make the most from the experience, we need to place a much greater emphasis on providing appropriate training in team skills

Another major issue is the unconscious bias that accompanies the first/last author attributions commonly used in research. This needs to be rethought to embrace the era of multi-author, multi-skill collaborative research, where credit is not assigned based on just authorship or PI status. There have been a number of recent attempts to develop a common, accepted researchers' taxonomy with both publishers and funders. One example gaining traction in the research community is Project CRedIT which has developed a new classification system for the diverse roles performed in collaborative research that is openly available and beginning to be used in current practice. Project CRedIT is being supported by CASRAI (consortia advancing standards in research administration) to review and encourage implementation by publishers, researchers and funding agencies.

The development of a classification of roles and contributions, combined with a system to record research contributions beyond authorships alone, will allow individuals to build a digital, portable, accessible portfolio that can be used to support and enhance career progression. Individuals can already take steps towards developing such a portfolio by obtaining an ORCID ID. ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an open, non-profit, community-driven effort to create and maintain a registry of unique researcher identifiers and a transparent method of linking research activities and outputs to these identifiers. ORCID provides two core functions: it is a registry to obtain a unique identifier and manage a record of activities, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that support system-to-system communication and authentication. There is a push to make ORCIDs mandatory for the next research excellence assessment and many publishers and funders are already utilising the identifiers in their systems. At present, there are several million research outputs captured by more than 2 million ORCID IDs.

[caption id="attachment_54049" align="alignnone" width="620"] There are currently more than two million ORCID IDs used by researchers.[/caption]

Funding opportunities can also be tailored to facilitate team science. Studies that require a team approach need to be sufficiently flexible and generous to support both excellent research but also to ensure adequate career development opportunities for the staff on the project. Funders will need to review and evaluate their funding for team science projects with the involvement of the research community, to build in extra balance, flexibility and magnitude. Engaging with the research community in this process will be essential and so will a continuing open dialogue during future years to keep funding fit for purpose. Funding and recognition are just two of the issues. For scientists to perform at their best in team science and make the most from the experience, we need to place a much greater emphasis on providing appropriate training in team skills. We must also be able to offer opportunities for personal development to the people participating in these ventures.There is sometimes a reluctance to acknowledge that individuals need to be trained and supported to become effective leaders and team members, but key skills such as networking, leadership, management, managing bias, assertiveness, and resolving conflict are critical for ensuring that team science projects are well managed and all team members thrive within the team.

To start, research outputs need to be open, transparent and standardised and both funders and employers should update their criteria for career progression and grant awards.

Employers need to take responsibility for encouraging their staff to develop skills beyond those gained during the pursuit of their own research agendas and researchers must share responsibility for their own training needs.The need for training does not just apply to researchers, funders too need to ensure their review panels have the appropriate skills and training to appraise team science grant applications. Our community has always acknowledged and welcomed both the joy and challenge of working collaboratively and it is therefore no surprise that we have embraced new ways of working in larger, more diverse teams as a mechanism for accelerating scientific discovery. Our working methods have changed but the way we recognise and value the work of individuals has not – I believe we must challenge traditional behaviours and champion change by supporting the adoption of personal identifiers such as ORCID IDs that can ensure we each build personal, portable portfolios capturing the full range of our research outputs.

Author: Professor Philippa Saunders FMedSci is a biomedical scientist, Professor of Reproductive Steroids and Director of Postgraduate Research Training for the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. She was elected to the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2012.

References:

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