Go Ahead and Ask for a Nickle on the Dime: The Systematic Issue of Academic Collaboration and How to Negotiate It Gracefully
In the realm of academia, collaboration is the cornerstone upon which groundbreaking research is built. It is the fusion of diverse perspectives and expertise that often leads to innovative discoveries, as recent research repetitively concluded. Nonetheless, this process is not without its challenges, as in any relationship. The unspoken dynamics of academic collaboration can sometimes resemble a complex puzzle, where negotiation, credit attribution, and resource distribution play pivotal roles. Unlike other fields of life, where a person can learn from adults, colleagues, or educators how to properly manage a relevant relationship; in the academic setting, the student entering academia is usually biased and guided with her advisor's objective in mind rather than herself. In this blog post, we delve into the systematic issues that often arise in academic collaboration and offer strategies to navigate these intricate waters gracefully.
Unsurprisingly, the topic of academic collaboration and its intricacies have garnered significant attention in the research community. Numerous studies have documented the potential pitfalls that can arise when individuals from different disciplines, institutions, or cultural backgrounds come together to work on a project. These works provide a non-biased, somewhat generic, overview of the situation and allow us to extract meaningful strategies. Notwithstanding, before we dive into these strategies, some intresting numbers about this atrocious phenomenon.
A study by Savchenko and Rosenfeld (2023) conducted an international and cross-disciplinary survey answered by 752 academics from 41 fields of research and 93 countries that statistically well-represent the overall academic workforce. Their findings are concerning and suggest that authorship credit conflicts arise very early in one's academic career, even at the level of Master's and Ph.D., and become increasingly common over time. To be exact, the data shows that conflicts over authorship credit distribution are often encountered very early in one's academic career. Specifically, nearly one out of four participants have reported at least one conflict with an advisor either during their Masters and/or their Ph.D. Moreover, the data suggests that roughly one-half of the participants in this study have experienced a conflict with their peers. These conflicts seem to escalate with age and experience with older, more experienced, and more productive participants reporting higher conflict rates compared to their counterparts. Taken jointly, the data strongly suggests a systematic challenge in academia rather than a small, confined phenomenon that could be attributed to a few bad apples. Specifically, the consistency of the data across countries, fields of research, and most examined socio-demographic properties suggest that the issue is of a very large scale and should be treated as such.
Given the current situation in the academic realm worldwide, successful collaboration is not about avoiding challenges entirely, but rather about approaching them constructively. By implementing the following strategies and adapting them to your unique circumstances, you can increase the chances of a smooth and productive collaborative experience.
Learn and address power dynamics
The first strategy is the most vague one. Namely, try to learn as much as possible about your co-authors on a personal level. Understanding your co-authors, their behavior patterns, and previous collaboration dynamics would allow you to better anticipate your current or future collaboration with them. For example, if you are looking for a Ph.D. advisor, ask his previous students (not the current one) about their experience - you may be surprised to learn what happens behind the closed doors of the lab. This strategy is even more important when a large number of labs and co-authors are involved in a project as not only the unique behavior of each member is important but the relationships between them play a critical role.
Agreed authors' list order, communication style, and tasks to accomplish
A recent research reveals the importance of agreeing on the authors' list order and the task accomplishment processes required to fulfill it. The authors focused on the fact that co-authors of a paper can raise an ultimatum of either improving their location in the authors' list or blocking the paper from publication. Several concerning outcomes from this study are the fact that larger research groups and longer research projects would lead to more conflicts. Moreover, it is shown that while for small research groups of two or three individuals (like the case of a student and an advisor), more conflicts would occur at the end of the study, for larger research groups most of the conflicts start shortly after the beginning of the project. To tackle this issue, the authors suggested using an uninterested third-party. However, this solution has its own shortcomings. It seems that the current system encourages such false behavior and a researcher has no other choice but to play the game. Following this assumption, the best course of action is to take into account in advance such losses and stop working with others who present mispractice behavior.
A schematic view of the process and possible outcomes from raising an ultimatum by an author.
Source
Define mediation mechanisms
As previously established, you will going to have issues. While you already have an issue, no one will agree on how to solve it as every side would try to pull the rope to his end. As such, defining mediation mechanisms before conflicts arise would allow the project team a relatively easy way out of the problematic situation. Make sure that the mediation mechanisms can be activated by one member of the team as other configurations may lead to undesirable outcomes.
Establish (written) exit strategy
While it's not pleasant to consider, having an exit strategy in place can be beneficial if collaborations need to be dissolved due to irreconcilable differences. This strategy could involve clear guidelines for parting ways while minimizing disruption. It is of course easier said than done as the other parties (from the author's experience, the worse kind) would dismiss the subject. In addition to the other parties' dismission, you may think it might harm an overall positive and important collaboration. To this end, let us consider the options rationally. If the other party does not worry about such scenarios, as everyone in the project would wish to avoid it, agreeing on some exit strategy should not be an issue as no one will ever use it. However, a party that avoids such an agreement is more often than not, keeping itself the option to play this card later in the game. Hence, an exit strategy is usually a "must-have" in new and even ongoing collaborations. Unlike the previous agreements we discussed in this blog post, this one should be written down and signed by all members of the project. Think about it... You are using the exit strategy when all hopes to finish the project seem lost. It is expected that some heat is already present and the memory of some project members may "change" a bit about your original agreement. A written one would help with these cases - if not with the project members themselves, with the relevant bodies you can address (universities, funding bodies, etc.)
Note, that while these strategies are indeed useful, they may make you look a bit "weird" in academia. It seems that academics expect each other to work on pure goodwill and trust and just accept unpleasant events every now and then. Trying to avoid this unpleasant experience as much as possible, may raise some eyebrows, especially of the older generation of academics. Thus, a personal balance between using these strategies and being so-called naive is recommended to enjoy the benefits of both approaches.
Acknowledgement
At this point, I wish to thank all my academic collaborators. Some of them became my friends, others can be found on my phone's block list, and several are just left as collaborators on my CV. However, in all cases, they taught me something and made me the researcher and academic I am today.