Outcomes from research collaborations: What are they and how long do they take?
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MATERIAL MATTERS
Outcomes from research collaborations: What are they and how long do they take? Lubella A. Lenaburg, Elizabeth S. Sciaky, and Tresa M. Pollock
M
aterials science has become a highly interdisciplinary field, with research challenges that increasingly require sophisticated instrumentation, experiments, theory, and modeling. It is often the case that no single institution or even a single country possesses the full set of expertise and resources needed for the major research challenges. While this broadening scope motivates research collaborations, there is little quantitative information about how long it takes for collaborations to develop and bear fruit following their initiation. Also, the limited literature available on the success of research collaborations focuses on publications, ignoring other significant outcomes of scientific interactions, such as patents, proposals, research visits, invited talks, and career advancement. Here, we present data on the timeline for scientific outcomes to develop from collaborations. Outcomes often occur many years after a collaboration is initiated, suggesting that long-term tracking over time periods extending beyond the period covered by a typical collaborative research grant is essential to capturing a significant portion of outcomes. Information gained from tracking can be critical for securing funding for programs designed to foster collaboration, particularly where reporting the success from previous programs is required. The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has recognized the importance of international collaborations, and provides funding to bring scientists together through a variety of programs, such as the International Materials Institutes (IMI), Partner-
ship for International Research and Education (PIRE), and the Materials World Network. One NSF project supported through the IMI program is the International Center for Materials Research (ICMR), initiated in 2004 at the University of California–Santa Barbara and in its ninth year of operation. To date, the Center has hosted 85 schools and workshops on emerging research topics in materials science, supporting almost 2500 faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate and undergraduate students from a wide range of materials science-related disciplines from 764 institutions in 65 countries, including the United States. The Center has also provided funding for US scientists to participate in over 400 extended research visits outside the United States, including significant resources for junior scientists. Because we have information from scientists at all stages in their careers, across many fields, and from a large number of countries around the world, we postulate that our findings based on this information likely apply to the broader scientific community and will have implications for programs that aim to increase opportunities for scientific collaboration, particularly on the international scale. An important element of the ICMR has been its detailed ongoing evaluation plan. Central to
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