Future directions of the science of team science
Moving the Science of Team Science Forward: Collaboration and Creativity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2008.05.007Get rights and content

Abstract

Teams of scientists representing diverse disciplines are often brought together for purposes of better understanding and, ultimately, resolving urgent public health and environmental problems. Likewise, the emerging field of the science of team science draws on diverse disciplinary perspectives to better understand and enhance the processes and outcomes of scientific collaboration. In this supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, leading scholars in the nascent field of team science have come together with a common goal of advancing the field with new models, methods, and measures. This summary article highlights key themes reflected in the supplement and identifies several promising directions for future research organized around the following broad challenges: (1) operationalizing cross-disciplinary team science and training more clearly; (2) conceptualizing the multiple dimensions of readiness for team science; (3) ensuring the sustainability of transdisciplinary team science; (4) developing more effective models and strategies for training transdisciplinary scientists; (5) creating and validating improved models, methods, and measures for evaluating team science; and (6) fostering transdisciplinary cross-sector partnerships. A call to action is made to leaders from the research, funding, and practice sectors to embrace strategies of creativity and innovation in a collective effort to move the field forward, which may not only advance the science of team science but, ultimately, public health science and practice.

Introduction

The emerging field of the science of team science draws together diverse disciplines to better understand and inform the collaborative processes and outcomes of team science. Team science can be conducted within a single, focused discipline, or can span different disciplines. The degree of variation across disciplines, as well as the breadth of levels of analysis (from cells to society), can affect the size and complexity of a given team. As such, the degree of complexity of a given problem that a team tackles can, in turn, influence the breadth and degree of the integration of disciplinary knowledge needed to explain or solve that problem. In the authors' view, the nascent field of the science of team science is currently in a descriptive or taxonomic phase of its development, during which key terms are being debated and defined as well as operationalized in specific contexts, and are being integrated into broader conceptual frameworks.1, 2 This supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine seeks to consolidate recent work in this field by assessing a variety of conceptual issues that must be addressed as a basis for informing future team science initiatives—for instance, examining ways to categorize and measure collaborative efforts; developing models to conceptualize key aspects of the field; and devising strategies to enhance, support, and sustain team science projects.

During both the 2006 conference3 and the development of this supplement, a variety of themes emerged that revealed knowledge gaps in the field and stimulated ideas and dialogues to guide future research. These themes pertain to: (1) the challenges associated with distinguishing between and empirically operationalizing unidisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to team science and training; (2) the efforts to integrate alternative conceptualizations of multilevel readiness for team science; (3) the development of strategies for ensuring the sustainability of transdisciplinary team science; (4) the need to create new models and practical strategies for training transdisciplinary scientists; (5) the development of new models, methods, and measures for evaluating the processes and outcomes of team science; and (6) the forging of new transdisciplinary partnerships among universities, governmental agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), private foundations, and corporations.

Section snippets

Toward an Integrative Taxonomy of Team Science

A central focus, to date, in the taxonomy of team science relates to the number of disciplines involved in a team and the kinds of interactions that occur across different disciplines. As is evident from a number of the articles included in this supplement,1, 2, 4 the predominant conceptualization thus far has been Rosenfield's5 definitions of and distinctions among unidisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary collaborations.

Although this supplement's primary

Team Science Readiness from a Social–Ecologic Perspective

Another important theme reflected in several articles in this supplement is the conceptualization and measurement of readiness for collaboration. This facet of team science has been conceptualized and measured in a variety of ways—for instance, in terms of individual and group research orientations, organizational and technologic resources that enhance the capacity for collaboration,4, 12, 17 and the scientific readiness of different fields for collaborative integration.11, 21

Stokols et al.17

The Sustainability of Transdisciplinary Team Science

Critics of transdisciplinary team science, in addition to being concerned about the volume of funds directed toward transdisciplinary team science and away from unidisciplinary research, contend that once transdisciplinary-specific funding is removed from a research group, center, or institution, the earlier collaborative efforts will not be sustained.24, 25 To date, this contention has not been tested directly by evaluating whether transdisciplinary teams remain productive and cohesive once

Training and Transformation: Developing Transdisciplinary Researchers

Transdisciplinary team science is still in the early phase of its development. Models to guide the development of transdisciplinary training curricula remain to be developed and tested. Nash27 in this supplement summarizes various conceptual models for enhancing transdisciplinary training processes and outcomes that are associated primarily with advanced graduate student- and postdoctoral-level training. In addition to training pre- and post-doctoral scholars, providing transdisciplinary

Team Science Models and Methods

Several conceptual frameworks were presented in this supplement to describe and evaluate the processes of transdisciplinary team science.1, 12, 14, 21, 30, 31 A major focus of these models has been on understanding the factors that facilitate or constrain transdisciplinary team science collaboration. The models have been drawn from a variety of fields, such as sociology, ecology, physics, and applied mathematics. Examples of the models currently used to describe transdisciplinary team science

Forging New Transdisciplinary Partnerships Across Sectors

An important direction for the science of team science is to examine factors that facilitate or impede productive partnerships among the multiple sectors of society that share an interest in sustaining transdisciplinary research, training, knowledge translation, and dissemination for the purpose of improving public health. As federal and state funding allocations for health research are reduced by societal demands for nonhealth-related investments (e.g., maintaining homeland security, enhancing

Moving Forward with Creativity

As described above, the science of team science is faced with many challenges yet to be solved. How are the value-added contributions of transdisciplinary science best assessed? When is transdisciplinary science warranted and when it is not, and how is that best decided? How can transdisciplinary science be conducted in a “smarter” manner? These questions ultimately lead to other concerns about the fundamental structure and culture in which science is conducted today and to demands for

References (39)

Cited by (0)

View full text