The science of team science: Origins and themes
The Science of Team Science: Overview of the Field and Introduction to the Supplement

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Abstract

The science of team science encompasses an amalgam of conceptual and methodologic strategies aimed at understanding and enhancing the outcomes of large-scale collaborative research and training programs. This field has emerged rapidly in recent years, largely in response to growing concerns about the cost effectiveness of public- and private-sector investments in team-based science and training initiatives. The distinctive boundaries and substantive concerns of this field, however, have remained difficult to discern. An important challenge for the field is to characterize the science of team science more clearly in terms of its major theoretical, methodologic, and translational concerns. The articles in this supplement address this challenge, especially in the context of designing, implementing, and evaluating cross-disciplinary research initiatives. This introductory article summarizes the major goals and organizing themes of the supplement, draws links between the constituent articles, and identifies new areas of study within the science of team science.

Section snippets

Background

The past two decades have witnessed a surge of interest and investments in large-scale team science programs.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Ambitious multiyear initiatives to promote cross-disciplinary collaboration in research and training have been launched by several public agencies and private foundations.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 Considering the enormous complexity and multifactorial causation of the most vexing social, environmental, and public health problems (e.g., terrorism and inter-ethnic

The Science of Team Science: Units of Analysis and Distinguishing Features

It is important to distinguish between team science initiatives themselves and the science-of-team-science field, whose principal units of analysis are the large research and training initiatives implemented by public agencies and nonpublic organizations and the various projects within each initiative conducted by scholars who work within and across their respective fields. Team science initiatives are designed to promote collaborative—and often cross-disciplinary—approaches to analyzing

Characteristics of Scientific Initiatives and Teams

Efforts to integrate knowledge in the science-of-team-science field face considerable challenges, owing to the highly disparate units of analysis found in the earlier studies of scientific teams.27, 36, 56 Research teams, for example, may consist of investigators drawn from either the same or different fields (i.e., unidisciplinary versus cross-disciplinary teams). These teams vary not only in terms of their disciplinary composition but also in terms of their size, organizational complexity,

Substantive Concerns and Research Foci Within the Science-of-Team-Science Field

The science-of-team-science field encompasses an amalgam of conceptual frameworks and methodologies that have been used in earlier studies to assess the processes and outcomes of cross-disciplinary research centers and teams. The findings from these studies are part of a rapidly growing database within the science-of-team-science field.2, 3, 8, 10, 31, 32, 38, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80 Common themes that offer a basis for integrating prior and future studies of team science initiatives are

Goals and Organization of This Supplement on the Science of Team Science

The present supplement is based on the proceedings of the NCI Conference on the Science of Team Science held in Bethesda MD during October 2006, cosponsored by the NCI, the NIH OBSSR, and the American Psychological Association.33 The purposes of the NCI conference were to address ambiguities and gaps in the science-of-team-science literature, promote greater integration of knowledge in this field, and identify key issues for future investigation. As a prelude to this event, the NCI convened a

Summary

The preceding discussion offers an overview of the science-of-team-science field in terms of its major conceptual, methodologic, and translational concerns. This field encompasses a wide array of research projects and strategies aimed at better understanding, evaluating, and managing circumstances that influence the effectiveness of large-scale team science initiatives. Common themes are beginning to emerge in the literature, but several gaps in the science-of-team-science knowledge base remain

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