Collaborative Research: MOD: Modeling Productive Climates for Virtual Research Collaborations

基于项目的研究协作是虚拟研究组织的一种重要形式。该项目为管理、评估和预测分布式研究合作的成功提供了科学基础。合作的成功取决于研究人员是否有一个富有成效的氛围：一个支持绩效和创新的社会和技术环境。在一个富有成效的环境中，合作者认为他们拥有有效合作的资源；他们看到了自己的成就和获得的奖励之间的联系；他们认为自己的团队灵活且欢迎创新方法；他们注意到，这种合作与他们的职业和机构的价值观之间的冲突很小。本研究定义并衡量了分布式研究合作的生产环境，并关注了生产环境的一个关键前提：合作的制度环境。这种环境的一个例子是，雇用研究者的机构是否看到了跨学科研究的特殊价值，并开发了支持这类研究的实践。调查人员研究了由国家科学基金会支持的项目样本的制度环境。这项工作的智力贡献包括记录高效气候对分布式研究合作的重要性，并追踪高效气候与这些合作的制度环境之间的联系。这种分析为衡量和预测协作中的绩效和创新提供了更好的度量标准。确定预测研究合作的生产环境和结果的制度因素也允许开发模型来预测哪些合作可能成功。这个项目更广泛的影响是为大学、机构和科学管理实践和政策以及跨学科、分布式研究合作的新形式提供信息。

An important kind of virtual research organization is the project-based research collaboration involving researchers from different institutions. The project provides a scientific grounding for managing, evaluating, and predicting success in distributed research collaborations. Collaborative success depends on whether investigators have a productive climate: a social and technical context that supports performance and innovation. In a productive climate, collaborators perceive they have resources to collaborate effectively; they see a link between their achievements and rewards they receive; they experience their group as flexible and welcoming of innovative approaches; and they note minimal conflict between the collaboration and their career and their institution's values. The research defines and measures a productive climate of distributed research collaborations and focuses on a key antecedent of a productive climate: the institutional environment of the collaboration. One example of this kind of environment is whether the institutions that employ the investigators see exceptional value in interdisciplinary research and have developed practices that support this kind of research.The investigators study the institutional environments of a sample of projects that were supported by the National Science Foundation. The intellectual contribution of this work includes documenting the importance of a productive climate for distributed research collaboration, and tracing the linkages among productive climate and the institutional environments of these collaborations. This analysis led to better metrics for measuring and predicting performance and innovation in collaborations. Identifying the institutional factors that predict the productive climate and outcomes of research collaborations also permit the development of models to predict which collaborations are likely to be successful. The broader impacts of this project are to inform university, agency, and regulatory practices and policies for science and new forms of interdisciplinary, distributed research collaboration.