Benefits of Collaboration in Science

Leyre Martínez -

Collaboration is one of the most important aspects of science. The ability to work together and pool our collective knowledge and resources is essential for progress in this field. Scientists actually have a lot in common with other collaborative teams—from sports teams to musicians, from comedians to chefs.

Today we talk about the most important benefits that collaboration provides for scientific research and how Orvium supports collaboration on its platform.

Benefits

Increased Reliability

The reliable results you get from scientific collaboration are one of the most important benefits of working together. In a typical research project, many people work on different parts of the project and review each other's work. This means that many people can check another person’s work or help with some aspect of it. If one person is having trouble finding certain data or has questions about what they should do next, they can ask for help from others who have already gone through the same process before.

For example, if you are writing a paper and need to include information about dates or statistics that you don't know offhand, your collaborators might be able to suggest where to find this information online or even provide it themselves! They could also read over drafts of your paper before sending them in so they can catch any errors or problems with formatting ahead of time.

Increase in Diversity

Diversity is the key to every collaboration. It's also a major challenge. But with careful planning and thoughtful execution, you can use diversity as a tool rather than an obstacle:

  • People: Diversity of people means that your collaboration will be more inclusive and representative of society at large. This is especially true in terms of ethnicity, gender identity/expression, age, and disability status—but it can also mean anything from geographical location to education level to professional experience level.
  • Ideas: Diversity in ideas refers to having multiple perspectives or points of view on scientific questions. For example, if there are two subfields studying the same topic but approaching it through different methodologies (e.g., one group uses animal models while another group relies on epidemiological studies), then they might have complementary goals that will add value when they combine their efforts in a cross-disciplinary project such as this one! The same idea applies if one group has access to new data whereas another doesn't; by working together they'll be able to incorporate more information into their research design than either would otherwise be able to include alone.

Decrease in Bias

You've probably heard of bias, and how it's a problem in science. You may even have experienced it firsthand as you've tried to get your research published or accepted by a journal. Bias can be caused by a number of things, including the following:

  • The researchers' culture or background.
  • A misunderstanding of the data, either on purpose or accidentally.
  • Personal opinions that are often unconscious, but still affect how data is interpreted and conclusions drawn from it (e.g., "I don't like this method; therefore I'm going to dismiss its findings").

Collaboration between multiple parties with different perspectives can help reduce these biases because each person will bring something unique to the table—and if one person's opinion doesn't match up with those of others in their group, they'll all be able to work together toward an agreement or compromise that works best for everyone involved!

Joint Ownership

Joint ownership is good for science. The more people are involved in the collaborative process, the better—because you're likely to have more significant intellectual resources and diverse perspectives as a group. This increases the probability of accurate results, along with reproducibility.

Collaboration is Good for Science

Science is a collaborative endeavor. We all know this, but it's important to remember that collaboration isn't just a good thing—it's critical for science today, and will be even more so in the future.

Collaborating is good for science because it allows us to reveal the unknown and make new discoveries, which are the main goals of any scientist or research team. And collaborating is good for the world because an increase in knowledge makes life better for everyone: better health care through increased access to treatment options; safer transportation systems that cut down on our chances of being injured or killed in car accidents; more efficient energy sources like solar panels that reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

But collaborating also benefits each individual scientist by making them better at their job—by broadening their perspective and allowing them access to resources they otherwise wouldn't have had access to (such as funding). And most importantly, collaborating helps scientists get ahead by increasing their visibility within their field.

Orvium Encourages Collaboration

We have already seen that collaboration is a fundamental pillar in scientific development today. That is why at Orvium we encourage collaboration through communities.

With our communities you can contact both authors and reviewers, bringing together different points of view and making collaboration easier. We also have different types of communities, adapted to your publishing and collaboration needs:

  • Journals
  • Conferences
  • Repositories

Examples of such communities are IFoU 2021 and ARCH 2022. You can visit them on our platform. If you want to know more about how they work, you can also visit our website or ask for information if you are interested in forming one.