The scientific enterprise is changing, as indicated by the growth of collaborative team approaches and the development of an associated “science of team science”. Ecological research has followed the trend towards interdisciplinarity. This acknowledges the necessity to account for alternative perspectives and knowledge bases in order to address many of central issues not just in applied ecology, which has long had connections to social science, but as well in core ecological science that now incorporates concepts and requires skills across the biological hierarchy. This enhancement of team approaches has occurred concurrently with increased specialization, with a “splitting” of the discipline by taxonomy, process scales, etc. The ongoing expansion of the number of ESA Sections is evidence of increased interest in specialized sub-areas. While several physical science disciplines have developed protocols that effectively enable larger collaborative efforts, ecology is just beginning to develop similar methodologies that arise from the continued expansion of ecological big data, complex models, and required multi-disciplinary expertise. Guidance on how to foster effective collaborative teams will enhance not only the science and policy produced from ecological research, but also provide insight for educational initiatives that could better prepare our junior colleagues for their collaborative futures.
Results/Conclusions
The changing nature of ecological research is evident from publications, including the dozens of authors on some recent “Data papers” in Ecology. The trend towards increasing collaboration sizes is evident in the core “Articles” papers in Ecology as well, observed by the number of authors (mean, std, n) on papers from the first two issues of each of the 1999 Volume (2.15, 1.05, 46), the 2009 Volume (3.87, 2.99, 38) and the 2019 Volume (4.65, 2.59, 23). NSF has supported large projects, including Synthesis Centers, to foster collaborations, providing an opportunity to evaluate teams, including Working Groups that were major activities at these Centers. The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS) has supported over 50 such Groups over the past decade, which have produced over 300 peer-reviewed papers. As is true of individual-level scientific productivity, productivity of these Groups is not equally distributed, with approximately half of the Groups producing the vast majority of the journal article publications. We have used publication data along with characteristics of the Group members to evaluate the group and individual level factors that predict scientific productivity within these teams, including effects of individual and group diversity factors on productivity.