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Build research collaborations
Collaboration is key to thriving research careers
Building successful collaborations takes time and effort, but there are huge rewards. Learn how to ensure your academic partnerships remain on track.
Key takeaways
- Collaborations need to be mutually beneficial. Consider what expertise you’re looking for in a collaborator, but also what you can bring to the partnership.
- Once a collaboration is underway, have clear and frequent communication to ensure everyone is updated and on the same page.
- There are many places to find potential collaborators: at conferences, via colleagues, or even online.
- Have appropriate agreements and contracts in place with all parties involved in the collaboration to prevent any misunderstandings.
Read time: 6 min
Where to start with research collaborations
You have a research project in mind and need a collaborator, but where do you start? Before reaching out to people, you want to think strategically about who the right collaborators for you might be.
Consider:
- What skills and expertise am I looking for in a collaborator on this project?
- Who has the specific expertise I’m looking for?
- What is their reputation?
- Are we likely to work well together?
Potential collaborators will be asking themselves the same questions about you. Since collaboration is a reciprocal process, you should also ask yourself:
- How would this person benefit from collaborating with me?
- What can I ‘bring to the table’?
Identifying mutual benefit is a surer foundation for a sustainable collaboration than having one person doing the other a favour.
How to find potential collaborators
Once you’ve asked yourself questions about what you want and what you can offer, there are lots of ways to find and connect with people you might want to collaborate with:
- At conferences and other events where you can network: Giving a talk at such events is a surefire way to attract interest. It’s also usually easy to strike up a conversation with someone in the crowd just by asking them about their research. People usually love talking about that!
- Via social media: As everyone knows these days, this is a great way to keep across developments in your field, and to find new people to work with. It also means that you can interact with people and build a rapport casually without having to ‘cold email’ them.
- By being professionally active: If you get involved in research societies, peer-review panels, conference organising committees and other such professional activities, you will inevitably meet a lot of like-minded people, and some of them could be your future collaborators.
- Through arranged introductions: Ask your colleagues, supervisors or mentors if there’s anyone in their networks you should consider collaborating with. Ask them for an introduction. You could offer to draft the introductory email yourself, to save them time.
- Through co-supervision of students: If you’re co-supervising an honours, master's or PhD student, it’s very likely that your research area and your colleagues are highly complementary. This could be a good basis for starting a conversation about collaborating, especially since you already have a shared student who could contribute to a joint project you devise.
- By hosting and visiting others: A great way to establish strong reciprocal relations is to host visiting students and researchers. And if there are researchers or research groups you particularly admire at other universities, find out if you can visit them. Your initial overture to them might be ‘I want to learn from you’, which is less demanding than ‘Can I collaborate with you?’ A collaboration may subsequently evolve.
- Through databases: It’s also possible to identify prospective collaborators by examining databases like Scopus or Scival and looking at who is publishing where, and on what. The downside of this approach, however, is that it doesn’t tell you anything about what the person is actually like to work with – so proceed with caution!
Thoughts on cold-calling (cold-emailing, really)
No one really likes contacting strangers out of the blue, and some people are not comfortable with this approach. But you’re not a door-to-door salesperson trying to sell a product nobody wants. You’re an expert (or budding expert) in your field of research, and you’re wanting to connect with someone in the same or a complementary field. So, you’re starting out with a lot in common. Also, academics’ email addresses are usually publicly available on university websites, so you’re not breaching anyone’s privacy by contacting them. A carefully-crafted, politely-worded email is usually the best way to make initial contact. If you’re not confident about what you’ve written, ask a colleague for a second opinion.
Collaborating upwards
Don’t forget about collaborating upwards. It’s much easier to approach someone who’s a peer than someone who’s a leader in your field. Highly-successful senior researchers are generally very busy people, so you don’t want to waste their time. By the same token, they can often be generous with their advice and support; indeed, many take the role of helping the next generation of researchers very seriously. So, think carefully about exactly why you would like to collaborate with them and about what you could offer in return, then summon up your confidence and connect. You may strike lucky! The worst that can happen is that they politely decline your offer; but now they’re aware of who you are, and perhaps they’ll refer you to someone else in their network or give you some really useful advice.
How to establish and maintain successful collaborations
Once you’ve found someone to work with, enter the collaboration carefully. Find out what you’re letting yourself in for, and don’t commit too soon – first impressions can be misleading! You don’t want to find yourself burdened with a disproportionate share of the work, for instance. Equally, you need to be clear about who you are and what you can contribute to the collaboration; and avoid overpromising. Remember, collaborations should be mutually beneficial.
Maintain clear communication
Once the collaboration is underway, maintaining clear and regular communication with your collaborators is essential. Keep them up to date on progress, and be transparent about any difficulties you encounter. Unresolved problems tend to snowball into larger one!
Have authorship conversations early and often
With multiple researchers working together to reach a shared goal, it’s important to have clear guidelines in place about authorship and the appropriate level of credit commensurate with input on the project. Some of the messiest disagreements over authorship could be avoided with preparation and communication.
Authorship Agreement form example (pdf, 201KB) (UniKey required)
International collaborations require extra considerations
The Australian Government has put in place a number of laws and guidelines that might impact your international research collaboration. You need to work through several steps, due diligence checks, and questions before embarking on an international collaboration.
Learn more and get help (UniKey required)
Get formal agreements (contracts) in place where relevant
Successful funding bids involving other Universities: Multi-institutional Agreements
If you’ve won external funding with collaborators from another university and the University of Sydney is the Lead organisation, the project cannot commence until the University of Sydney and all collaborators have entered into a written agreement addressing roles and funding (Multi-institutional Agreement or ‘MIA’).
Other types of Agreements
Depending on the circumstances, other formal agreements that might be relevant include Research Collaboration Agreements, Confidentiality Agreements, and Material Transfer Agreements (MTA; to transfer various research materials between organisations).
Learn more and get help (UniKey required)
Protect intellectual property
Protecting your intellectual property is particularly important if there is a chance of the research being commercialised at some point. Seek early advice from the Commercialisation Office, who can provide advice and help get relevant agreements in place.
Learn more and get help (UniKey required)
Considerations for submitting funding proposals
If the collaboration is for a funding proposal, have you checked that you and your collaborator(s) are eligible to apply? In certain funding schemes, if even one member of the project team is ineligible, the entire application will be ruled ineligible! Again, if you’re unsure, seek advice from the Research Portfolio.
Contact the Research Portfolio (UniKey required)