How important is teamwork for academic success?
Interest continues to grow in a multidisciplinary approach to academia. Research teams that bring together scientists and experts from a wide variety of disciplines are making advancements that receive plenty of headlines. The success of teamwork in science, it seems, pays off. Or does it? A research team led by the University of Kansas in the United States revealed that teamwork may not be the most ideal approach for young scientists armed with a PhD who are looking for a job in academia. The findings were published in the journal ‘Nature Biotechnology’.
The more, the merrier?
“We found that if your team size in your discipline is large, your prospects for an academic career go down,” commented Donna Ginther, professor of economics at the University of Kansas, in a news release. “The number of authors on papers in our discipline has changed. In econ, when I graduated, there were single-author or two-authored papers. Now it’s often three to five -- so it’s essentially doubled. In science fields in particular, it’s grown a lot.” The researchers examined the academic career outcomes of PhD graduates in science, engineering and health fields who were trained in the United States and work there. They used survey data from the National Science Foundation – an independent agency that tracks PhD graduates from the time they complete their degree until age 76.
Size matters
“The questions we asked were if the average team size gets larger, what does it affect? Then how does it affect your career?” Prof. Ginther added. The analysis showed that as team size at the time of graduation rose across fields and over time, individuals were more unlikely to get tenure-track jobs, obtain tenure and receive research funding from the federal government. They were also more likely to leave academia and their scientific domain. “I have a whole body of work on early career scientists,” Prof. Ginther stated. “For this paper, I really liked the model we used and the intuition behind the result. The world is big and complex, and teams are an important part of it. You can’t be this kind of solitary intellectual. Teamwork is something you must be able to navigate.” Prof. Ginther concluded: “To the extent we can make more groups of scientists that are smaller, this could lead to a policy change that is supported by our work. Having more smaller teams may be better than megateams, both in terms of scientific discovery and career outcomes.”
Keywords
teamwork, team, PhD, scientist, science, academia, academic career, career