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Collaboration benefits for ECRs
Garner mutual rewards by working with others on shared research goals
For many academics, collaborating with others is fundamental to their research and the development of their career as a whole. You might think of it as a key building block for growth.
Key takeaways
- Collaborating with other researchers enables you to learn from others, including the chance to practise or observe leadership.
- It can also allow you to tackle larger research questions and expand research impact.
- Collaborating can enable access to new resources, equipment, and expertise, offering new research possibilities.
- It can also increase funding opportunities, promoting independence in your career.
- Collaborating with established researchers elevates your reputation and expands networks.
Read time: 3 min
Why collaborate?
An obvious but often overlooked reason for collaborating is that it can be a lot of fun! There is a pure intellectual pleasure in sharing ideas, discussing issues and addressing challenges with other like-minded people. Collaborating also introduces a much-needed social element to research, which can sometimes be a lonely affair. And it can make you feel part of ‘something bigger’, which can be very motivating.
There are many good reasons for building research collaborations, besides the pleasure of working with others.
Collaborations are educational and support your leadership
You will learn from your collaborators, extending your knowledge and skills and expanding your intellectual horizons. Observing experienced researchers lead projects will also be extremely beneficial for your own leadership aspirations.
Collaborating with others can also ‘lift your game’. Not only will you imbibe some of their knowledge and experience merely through the ‘osmosis’ of interacting with them, but you will benefit from receiving direct feedback on your work (e.g. publications, funding proposals, and research reports).
Broaden the possibilities, scale, and impact of your research
You will be able to tackle ‘bigger’ research questions requiring larger teams, and from new and interesting cross-, multi- or inter-disciplinary angles. This may include participating in, or eventually leading, a bid to establish a research centre. Taking on these bigger research questions via larger projects and teams will increase the likelihood of achieving major advances in your field of research as well as having significant impact on the world beyond academia.
Collaboration can also enable you to broaden the impact of your research and branch into new areas that you might not want to specifically direct your own team’s research. For example, a basic scientist might collaborate with clinical researchers for translation and impact, but still stay primarily focused on fundamental research themselves.
Leverage additional resources
Through your collaborators you will have access to more equipment, infrastructure, expertise and other resources. This opens up new possibilities and research questions as well as potentially greater depth of insights.
Increased chances of obtaining funding and research productivity
Collaborators can fill the gaps in expertise that might otherwise reduce the feasibility of a project you want to get funded; and you can do the same for your collaborators’ projects. The net result is greater scope for research and therefore more, and more diverse, opportunities for funding. There are also many funding schemes that require multidisciplinary approaches and large, diverse teams.
Collaborating on projects led by others also potentially increases your publication output and the chance of getting funded separately from your supervisor. This can help you with gaining independence early in your career.
Enhance your profile and expand networks
Conducting research and publishing with other researchers, especially more senior researchers who are already well established, will boost your reputation, making you known more widely.
Your collaborators will have their own collaborators whom you may meet, and perhaps industry partners too. Your enhanced profile will also increase your opportunities for meeting new people and expanding your networks. It can also benefit your citation counts as your networks expand.