Types of Collaborations
The term "collaboration" in academic research is usually thought to mean an equal partnership between two academic faculty members who are pursuing mutually interesting and beneficial research. Today, however, many collaborations involve researchers of differing stature, funding status, and types of organizations. Even if the two principal collaborators are similarly powerful, a collaboration frequently involves several other people from the research groups of the PIs, including post-doctoral fellows, research staff members, graduate students, and/or undergraduate students. Are these research group members aware of the agreements reached by the PIs? Do they understand the provisions of these agreements? Do the agreements protect the interests of the research group members; for instance do they protect the interests of graduate students in completing their dissertations and publishing their results? Administrative staff my want to raise these questions as they work with researchers to set up the subawards, collaborative agreements, or other types of agreements intended to formalize the collaboration.
Some examples of the variations in collaborations that can occur:
- Members of two research groups in different departments of the same institution work together on a project. No external funding is involved, and the work is divided reasonably equally between the two groups. All those involved meet together regularly to review their progress and plan for publication of their results.
- A researcher from a private company works with the research group of an academic faculty member for several months. During this time the non-academic researcher pursues his own project while learning about current techniques and research questions from the graduate students in the group.
- In order to complete a large data collection for which a senior researcher has received federal funding, the researcher has organized a collaboration with three junior faculty members at other institutions who were previously his graduate students.
- In order to learn a new technique, a graduate student travels to another institution several times over the course of a year. Each time she stays for 2-3 weeks, and participates in the research of the other research group.
- Needing an analysis of the effect of a new compound on living plants, a researcher who is only familiar with laboratory analyses contacts an agricultural researcher she met at a conference. They agree to each carry out their own analysis of the new compound, and then combine their results for publication.
- To gain a more global perspective on a public health question, a collaboration among ten research groups in six countries is established. All research groups independently apply for their own funding. The collaborators agree that all data collected regarding the question they are studying will be made available to the entire collaborative as soon as the graduate student most directly involved in gathering the data set has completed his/her dissertation.
