Research Collaboration Suggestions

[kerprof]

How do you identify collaborators for research and how do you sustain it successfully?

[polly_mer]

At conferences, workshops, and recurring seminars, I talk to people who are doing similar things to me.  Eventually, a collaboration may develop based on shared interests and having enough money to fund those interests.

When someone needs to move on with their career or there's no longer money for the shared interests, then the collaboration dissolves.

[Puget]

My collaborations are a mix of (a) people I've known and worked with for a long time (grad school, postdoc) and often expanding out to *their* networks, (b) colleagues at my university who have complementary areas of expertise that allow us to do multidisciplinary stuff together (and co-mentor grad students sometimes), (c) collaborations that grow out of conversations at conferences etc. (which may be specific to one project or could grow into more if it works well).

I think sustaining good collaborations is a lot like sustaining friendships-- you have to work at it, ensuring that you meet on a regular basis, show respect for one another's contributions and ideas (and time), and build some degree of real human connection beyond the work.

[Volhiker78]

One thing I have noticed in my collaborations with researchers is that successful groups seem to intrinsically acknowledge that different people bring different strengths. One person may have great ideas but isn't detailed oriented.   Another person enjoys the details and is a good writer.  Someone else keeps everyone on task.  As Puget mentions, having a human connection beyond just work helps tremendously and keep collaborations going for a long time.

[mamselle]

The collaborations I've seen second-hand have also had a kind of balanced, "tit-for-tat" aspect to them (a bit like what was just said above), in that, for example, one person I worked for liked to travel and visit different museum collections of the biological materials they worked with.

They'd get invitations to speak somewhere, and they'd both accept the invitation, and parlay it into a "...may I visit your collection for a couple days on either side of that?...oh, and I'm working on this and I noticed your work on that complements it, would you like to show me the materials you've collected, maybe we have a shared interest to write (or present, or poster) about?" kind of lateral expansion that benefitted them both.

I spent three days plowing through the letter files (back in the day) to find the person's name, based on the country, town, and university they were at. The invitation had been three years earlier; a matching interest had just come up and my person wanted to visit their place ASAP, which they did, on the next school holiday.

(Another reason for filing your emails, now that we do that instead, very clearly--interthreaduality--because you might be better able to take advantage of such connections if you do.)

This person also had a very extensive network of former students spread (very far) all over the place, and made a point of inviting them to work on projects after they'd graduated and had a position somewhere.

When my boss retired, my last job was to create a serial tour of all the folks that had worked with this person, joining up and visiting each other's sites and studying their collections together.

There were eighteen of them, and it took three weeks, and six visas, in addition to all the usual passport stuff.

We all had a ball--me, vicariously, because they'd send back photos from each spot--and them as they met up, caught up with each other, and said "good bye" to their mentor.

M.

[Hibush]

Mostly reiterating the good advice so far.

Finding collaborators effectively requires a sound network and a reputation as someone with something to offer. It's worth being somewhat intentional about building that network and reputation throughout ones career.

A good collaborator on a project is someone who

• brings a complementary skill or area of knowledge. That way you are stronger together and can hand off logically.
• is pretty reliable in delivering on commitments, and predicable in when they won't.
• you enjoy. When you see their number pop up on a ringing phone, you should look forward to the conversation.
• gives and expects due credit.

[Morden]

I would also suggest beginning a smaller (time limited) project with a new collaborator--just to see how things go rather than leaping into a major project.

[nonsensical]

I would also suggest beginning a smaller (time limited) project with a new collaborator--just to see how things go rather than leaping into a major project.

I agree with this, especially if you don't know the person well already. Collaborations can take multiple years. For my own work, I hesitate to devote that kind of time and energy to a project with someone unless I know them or have some other reason to believe that we would work well together.

If you are trying to start a new collaboration, it helps to have some kind of connection with the person rather than reaching out of the blue. Like someone mentioned above, you could get to know people at conferences and bring up the idea of collaborating later on, once they've had a chance to get to know you.

[Kron3007]

I would reiterate finding people with complementary skills/focus rather than finding people that work in the same field (or too similar).  It may seem like a great match based on your interests, but I have found that is not the case.  I had one collaboration like this break down and feel that it was in part because we end up competing in some ways (not necessarily on that project, but in general)

The better collaborations I have had were when the project requires both skill sets to complete.  In these cases, it was a natural fit, we both need each other, and we have very clear roles in the project.

To find collaborators, I have had the most success when I have a project identified and I invite people to join.  This makes the arrangement clear and provides a means to get funding.