Rewarding Open Science, Team Science and Collaborative Approaches

Rewarding Open Science, Team Science and Collaborative Approaches
By Joachim Goedhart (UvA), Serkan Girgin (UT), Connie Claire (TU Delft), Sanli Faez (UU), Maria Cruz (NWO) and Hans de Jonge (NWO)

In this session, we discussed how research funders can reward and incentivise open science and team science through funding instruments such as the Open Science Fund. Taking some of the awarded projects as examples, we looked at best practices for teamwork and collaboration and discuss how to reward and recognise such practices.

Discussion topics were:

• Best practices for teamwork and collaboration
• What can we learn from the featured projects?
• What can we learn from open science practices more generally?
• How can we reward and recognise teamwork and collaboration in grant assessment?
• How can we reward open science in grants beyond the Open Science Fund?

The most important conclusions are:

• Team science is a skill. It does not come automatic.
• Working together in interdisciplinary groups is easier when you have an altruistic and like-minded team where you all have mutual benefit from being in the team.
• Support staff are often crucial for the success, effectiveness and efficiency of teams. Reward and recognition for support is therefore very important, however it often runs behind. It would help if funders would consider funding more collaborations.
• One way to evaluate collaborative teams is to talk to the team members. Another way is to look at the structures in place. Is there an onboarding process? How is information circulated? Are the different roles well described?