The New ABCs of Research by Shneiderman Ben

Author:Shneiderman, Ben
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

1 US National Institutes of Health, ClinicalTrials.gov (Accessed August 6, 2015) https://clinicaltrials.gov/.

2 Haskins, R. and Margolis, G., Show Me the Evidence: Obama’s Fight for Rigor and Results in Social Policy, Brookings Institution Press, Washington, DC (2014).

An even more striking statistic reveals the warm reception for journal papers from five-person teams of coauthors, as in 2000 such teams had 2.62 times as many citations as single-author papers did. Coauthor team sizes have been growing over time, and their impact compared to solo authors is also growing larger. It seems teams are learning to be more effective, possibly because teamwork has been taught and technology support is better. By 2013, 90% of science and engineering papers in the Web of Science had two or more authors.18

Skeptics point out that papers with more authors are more likely to get citations from each of the authors; but, even after discounting this factor, the advantage of teams remains strong. More coauthors will know more colleagues, so they might spread the news further, but there is strong evidence that work by multiple authors is actually better work. This is the potent central claim: teams produce better work, because they take on more ambitious projects, bring complementary knowledge, and apply diverse research methods. Further advantages are that teams have larger social networks to collect input during research and disseminate results as they emerge.

Another confirmation of the benefits of teams came from a conference on knowledge discovery and data mining (the ACM-KDD), which in 2014 had an impressively rigorous acceptance rate of 14.6%.19 The reviewer ratings of the 1000+ submitted papers increased steadily for papers with up to five coauthors and then remained level. Reviewer ratings may be imperfect, but this bit of evidence seems especially potent.

While teamwork is growing in science research, it has long been a part of engineering research and even more so in design research. Design-studio training includes teamwork methods such as brainstorming and critiquing as part of the collaborative nature of design work, which is often conducted in open-plan environments so that social contacts are facilitated. Engineering training also involves teamwork to take on the complex and diverse components of many research projects, which is especially true in large business or government projects that may have thousands of engineers and designers. The growth of science research teamwork probably stems from the increasing complexity of contemporary challenges, and the improved technologies that support teamwork.

There are also substantial social and personal reasons that teams can be more effective. Working in a team, even a team of two, requires explicit coordination and puts pressure on each partner to deliver on time to satisfy stated expectations. In the best situations, teamwork promotes not only timely but also high-quality work, since there is a strong incentive to demonstrate excellence to partners who will recognize it. There is also strong social pressure to “pull your weight,” an appealing industrial-age metaphor that means each team member contributes fairly. A further benefit of teamwork is the opportunity for all members to learn from each other, and sometimes to show off what they know.

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