Weinmann Carina, Hückstädt Malte, Meißner Florian, Vowe Gerhard
Department of Social Sciences, Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, Berlin, Germany.
Research Area Governance in Higher Education and Science, German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW), Berlin, Germany.
Front Res Metr Anal. 2023 Feb 23;8:1106482. doi: 10.3389/frma.2023.1106482. eCollection 2023.
In recent years, collaboration has become the norm in scientific knowledge production. Like other forms of collaboration, research collaborations (RCs) face specific problems that can jeopardize success. Against this background, the present study sought to gain a deeper understanding of the relevance of different collaboration problems and the interconnections among these problems. Building on previous insights into the most current problems, we addressed four major issues: (1) researchers' perceived relative relevance of collaboration problems in their projects (in terms of their occurrence), (2) differences in these perceptions based on the type of RC (e.g., number of subprojects and collaboration mode) and (3) on the characteristics of researchers, and (4) the co-occurrence of collaboration problems. Based on a representative survey of leading participants of RCs funded by the German Research Foundation ( = 5,326), we found that researchers experienced collaboration problems (e.g., fairness and communication problem) only to a small degree, and there were almost no differences regarding their perceived relevance. Furthermore, there were almost no significant differences concerning the perceived relevance of these problems depending on the type of RC or the individual researchers. However, the findings did reveal specific patterns of co-occurrence (e.g., relationship and difference problem). The results suggest that previous research may have overstated the relevance of collaboration problems in RCs. Instead, it seems that at least in Germany, collaborative research works better than one might assume.
近年来，合作已成为科学知识生产中的常态。与其他合作形式一样，研究合作面临着可能危及成功的特定问题。在此背景下，本研究旨在更深入地理解不同合作问题的相关性以及这些问题之间的相互联系。基于对当前最新问题的先前见解，我们探讨了四个主要问题：（1）研究人员在其项目中感知到的合作问题的相对相关性（就其发生情况而言），（2）基于研究合作类型（例如子项目数量和合作模式）以及研究人员特征的这些感知差异，以及（3）合作问题的同时出现。基于对德国研究基金会资助的研究合作主要参与者的代表性调查（= 5326人），我们发现研究人员经历合作问题（例如公平性和沟通问题）的程度较小，并且在他们感知到的相关性方面几乎没有差异。此外，根据研究合作类型或个别研究人员来看，这些问题在感知相关性方面几乎没有显著差异。然而，研究结果确实揭示了同时出现的特定模式（例如关系和差异问题）。结果表明，先前的研究可能夸大了研究合作中合作问题的相关性。相反，至少在德国，合作研究似乎比人们想象的运作得更好。
