Characteristics of university-based research groups

Today doing lots of reading and research on collaboration systems and practices for distributed teams. And especially for research teams. Tracey Lauriault (see also her datalibre.ca writing) gave me a paper she wrote on this with Fraser Taylor: Cybercartography and the New Economy: Collaborative Research in Action.

I’ve not yet read the whole paper, but sharing this part because found it helpful. It’s practical information to keep in mind to develop a strategy that works.

Descriptive Characteristics of University-based Research Groups

1. The reliance on short-term support from students thus causing turnover issues.
2. Students hired into these projects are given the ‘‘unfaculty’’ title as they do not adhere to a particular discipline and are of a different status than professors.
3. The limitations of funding often impedes travel and face-to-face interaction at conferences and thus time and resources allocated to networking is often scarce for smaller projects.
4. Balancing size and innovation; often the smaller the group the lesser the innovation; while a very large group requires too much structure.
5. Time pressures are significant since in academia the quantity of publications at times is considered more important than their quality.
6. Campus location and space is often an issue, in particular access to meeting space
7. Teaching tends to take priority over project demands
8. Researchers often do not like to disassociate themselves from their disciplinary institutions for fear of ‘‘out of mind out of sight’’ issues.
9. The advantage of a university setting, however, is access to a wide array of intellectual and infrastructure resources.
10. Organizational culture is a factor for these groups since, in a university setting, people choose to work on problems they like since there is no incentive to do otherwise, which increases the level of commitment
11. Often, but not always, a university setting is generally considered egalitarian — reducing the friction between the disciplines.

Adapted from Epton et al. (1983), Managing Interdisciplinary Research.