Enabling High-Impact Collaborative Clinical and Translational Research through Effective Information Management: A Prototype Intervention

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PROJECT SUMMARY An interdisciplinary, team science approach is required to address our most complex scientific questions. Yet team science can be challenging, as collaboration requires additional coordination and communication to succeed and few researchers are trained in strategies to support collaborative work. Previous research has identified practices and activities of effective collaborative science teams, including collaboration planning, authorship agreements, and clear roles and responsibilities. Central to these activities is effective, efficient management of information, defined here as the human-generated digital objects of the team's work to achieve its scientific goals. Translational Teams (TTs), those conducting Clinical and Translational Research (CTR), are an ideal population in which to investigate questions of team science and information management. TTs are a hybrid of academic research and product development teams, with a goal of creating and advancing a discovery from the bench to the clinic to the community. To accomplish this, TTs work across disciplines and institutions, potentially over long periods of time, engaging with a wide variety of information to generate new biomedical knowledge. Currently, we know little about the ways in which TTs engage with information across the translational spectrum. Previous research has shown that TTs use a constellation of information strategies, processes, and tools simultaneously and, often, haphazardly, to manage the information of CTR. This haphazard approach to information management leads to lost or misplaced information, inaccurate records, and delays in efforts to improve health. Poorly documented studies can jeopardize study participants when key information is not tracked and communicated. This gap in TTs' information management represents an opportunity to improve how TTs conduct research, increase rigor and reproducibility, and expedite implementation of CTR. The long-term goal of this research is to improve the capacity of TTs for doing high- impact team science by improving their ability to manage their projects' information. Our mixed methods project will complete the following aims. Aim 1: Develop a conceptual framework describing the impact of TT information behaviors on the conduct of CTR. We will identify and catalog the information involved in CTR and the strategies, tools and processes TTs use to engage with information, then develop a conceptual framework that maps the information behaviors that facilitate or impede the conduct of high-impact collaborative CTR. Aim 2: Prototype and test an educational module to train and coach TTs in developing and implementing team- and individual-level information management strategies adapted to the team's collaboration context. We will create and test a feasible, usable intervention to help TTs improve their information management practices. The expected outcome is an intervention to facilitate improved conduct of team-based CTR. Future work will include validating the intervention across the Clinical and Translational Science Award hubs and beyond, as well as measuring long-term impact on scientific outcomes.