Starting with Team Science

Learning Objectives

After completing this module, you will be able to:

  • Understand the power and benefits of synthesis
  • Identify funding sources for supporting synthesis
  • Recognize the importance of establishing group norms and expectations
  • Evaluate strategies for group organization and project management

Workshop Slides - Under Construction

Google Slides link

Define Synthesis

For the purposes of today’s discussion, we define synthesis as:

Bringing together the results of multiple studies to test novel hypotheses–usually with a team of people.

Why Synthesis?

different levels of interaction between researchers and stakeholders

This process–of bringing diverse expertise together to combine existing primary data–definitely has its challenges. Ideniftying and engaging the necessary combination of skills and experience is challenging. Scheduling meeting times can be difficult. Commitment to the process can be uneven. Nonetheless, virtually all who have experienced it find it to be a deeply rewarding experience. Why?

  • The products emerging from synthesis typically have higher impact (as defined by both academic and applied measures)
  • The process allows researchers to access and incorporate skills that they don’t (yet) have themselves.
  • Working groups help early career researchers build their science networks.
  • Keep experienced researchers fresh and engaging with new ideas
  • Builds on existing investments of the science community by re-using data
  • Offers a way to involve individuals who can’t or don’t want to do fieldwork in original research and expands opportunity to less research-intensive institutions.

Additional Resources

Process Overview

Typically, a group of researchers–or researchers and managers or community members–will plan a series of meetings over 2-3 years. The mix of in-person v. virtual meetings and work will vary across different groups and different funders, but the general pattern is similar.

graphic of typical timeline for working group process, with in person work alternating with online interaction

Early meetings focus on narrowing the questions and deciding what data is needed and what analyses will be most useful. A period of data gathering and assembly comes next. The assembly of data almost always prompts a revision of the initial questions, as data rarely comes in exactly the form that researchers expected. This can be both the most frustrating and the most interesting part of the process as new hypotheses and models are floated and discussed. It is especially important to have the full participation of researchers familiar with different fields and ecosystems in this process.

With tractable questions refined, the group will move into analysis mode. Often, a few individuals will do most of the data wrangling and coding, but will need continuous input on analytical decisions. In our experience, GitHub issues is one very good tool for facilitating and recording these decisions. But the “best” tool will be the one that most members of the team are most comfortable with.

Later meetings will focus on developing manuscripts and/or application-related products such as white papers and decision support tools.

How to get Involved

Often, early career researchers will be excited about the idea of synthesis but be unsure how to connect with existing or nascent synthesis efforts. Here are a few ideas for how to make yourself available and valuable to synthesis groups.:

  • Make it known you want to be involved in synthesis
    • Let your advisor know
    • Share your enthusiasm
  • Skill building:
    • Synthesis Skills for Early Career Researchers: SSECR
    • Data Carpentries
    • ESIIL: innovation summit, hackathons
    • Environmental Data Science Summit
  • Build your community
    • Ask questions at meetings
    • Initiate conversations
  • Start your own!

Identifying a Synthesis-Ready Question

Lots of questions are interesting, but not terribly well-suited for a synthesis approach. We’ve learned through experience that there are a few qualities that make some questions a better fit for a) combining data; and b) work by a group. The main qualities that we seek in synthesis projects include:

  • Novel and interesting enough to keep you engaged for 2-3 years.
  • Data already exist and you know (at least generally) where to find it
  • Questions cover a large geographic area or data that aren’t normally collected or analyzed together
  • Clearly framed, but flexible enough to allow adaptation through the process
  • Responsive to the funding call
  • Outputs could include several kinds of products. As the project progresses, gard students will become postdocs, postdocs will get faculty positions. For the project to remain satisfying to all participants, people will need to be able to take a leadership role on different kinds of products.
    • Papers (including data papers, perspectives, gap analyses, as well as primary analyses)
    • Symposia
    • Datasets
    • Analytical Packages

Sources of Support for Synthesis

While it is certainly possible to conduct synthesis with no external support, a bit of funding will allow your group to travel to meet up in person and can, in some cases, provide salary support for postdocs, grad students or or assistance with analysis.

What funding sources support synthesis work?

Sources of Funding and Support

Synthesis Centers

Societies

NSF Programs

Building a Team

The Leadership Team

The composition of the leadership team will affect the success of the project and who you will be able to recruit to the larger group. Look for:

  • Different (and complementary) areas of expertise
  • Complementary professional networks
  • Facilitation skills
  • Emotional Intelligence

The Broader Team

In our experience at NCEAS and the LTER Network Office, we’ve found teams of up to 10 to 15 people to be optimal for synthesis work. As individuals, we all have strengths and weaknesses. The beauty of working in teams is that you can invite people who offset your own weaknesses and who bring strengths you don’t have. Often, you’ll have a few core team members who have generated a synthesis idea, but then you’ll want to take a clear-eyed look at what additional skills and qualities to invite. When you do so, be sure to consider:

  • Skills, Aptitudes, and Communication Styles
    • Look for a mix of empiricists, theorists, and modellers
    • Big-picture thinkers, organizers, task-oriented do-ers
    • Deep thinkers and risk-takers
    • At least some skilled coders
  • Career stage
    • Senior investigators connect the team to existing literature and fields of study, connect to a broad network of experienced researchers, and have good knowledge of resources, but are often have a very limited amount of time to devorte to discussion and analyses
    • Junior team members often bring a fresh perspective, familiarity with newer literature, strong coding skills, and time to devote to the project
  • Emotional intelligence
    • Research shows (Aggarwal and Woolley, 2018) that the bump in creativity seen in mixed-gender teams is typically due to an increase in emotional intelligence and attention to team dynamics. Include at least a few people with a process orientation and strong people skills.
  • Power dynamics
    • You won’t be able to anticipate all of the issues related to power dynamics that can arise, but keep them front of mind as you assemble a team.
  • Remember that participation in synthesis represents a significant career opportunity
    • Be mindful that such career-building opportunities have not been fairly distributed
    • Be intentional seeking out people who may not be part of your typical circles (including gender, ethnicity, career stage, family status, (dis)abilities, etc.)

Additional Resources

Setting Expectations

In any team project, people have different reasons for wanting to participate - and different anxieties about what “participation” will mean. For you, getting a high profile paper may be the most important thing. For others, it may be expanding their network or a chance to practice new skills. Being transparent about those goals, and the behaviors that support them, makes it easier to resolve tensions when they arise.

Survey results from 5 cohorts of LTER-funded synthesis groups to the question: *How important is it to you to gain the following potential benefits through participation in the working group?*

Importance of various benefits to working group participants

Time Commitments

We all misjudge our availability once in a while, but consistently failing to deliver on commitments disrupts others’ work plans and is a major source of group dissatisfaction. Get buy-in for commitments and plan for both reminders and accountability.

There are many approaches to establishing group norms, but a shared process that helps create ownership and buy-in is one key to a smoothly-functioning working group.

The process can be as simple as taking 15 minutes to ask the group about their shared (and diverging) values and what those imply about how the group should function. The best choice for your group will depend on the mix of participants, the nature of the content, and the duration of your collaboration.

This version is simplest and most appropiate when your group has some shared history and mainly needs a reminder to attend to their share values. Even so, be sure to leave enough time and space for participants to add new ideas or concerns. Offer some basic starting point values and norms, then ask the group to add any that haven’t been raised yet. Record the results and return to them at the start of meetings.

Group Values

  • Inclusion
  • Creative Thinking
  • Teamwork
  • Accountability
  • Fun

What else?

This version is a little more involved and directive with resepct to behaviors as well as values. Edit, add, or delete suggestions depending on any concerns in your group.

Community Rules for Inclusive and Productive Discussions

  • We are all responsible for cultivating a respectful and inclusive atmosphere to benefit from our diverse community of participants.
  • Listen with curiosity and resilience, not judgement.
  • Assume the best of intentions.
  • Allow others to participate and avoid dominating the conversation.
  • Accept/meet people where they are.
  • Bring a spirit of generosity (for yourself and others).
  • Be kind to yourself.
  • Support learning.
  • Be attentive to power and privilege.
  • Enjoy yourself!

For longer collaborations with more challenging power dynamics, it may be worth engaging in a slightly more involved process. In workshops run by the Center for Improved Mentoring of Experiences in Research (CIMER), a facilitator presents a set of group behaviors categorized as group-oriented or self-oriented.

table of group-oriented and self-oriented behaviors

Break onto small groups and discuss the following questions:

  1. What are some strategies to maximize group-oriented & minimize self-oriented behaviors?
  2. Are there special considerations for an online space? How can group dynamics be different in an online vs. face-to-face environment?
  3. How can we leverage our knowledge of group behaviors as we work together during this workshop?

The exercise presents an opportunity for self-reflection and for participants to commit to (and ask for help in) curbing their unhelpful behaviors. After all, we all have them!

Making a Communication and Work Plan

Good teams are both chosen and made. Diversity on teams uncovers novel approaches, perspectives, and insights and it can slow the pace and cause misunderstandings that highlight unexamined assumptions. As a synthesis team leader (and even as a participant), there are many things you can do to create opportunities for everyone to contribute their best thinking, learn from one another, and feel heard and respected.

As the group gets started

  • Create a shared vision for your group
    • Make sure everyone starts on the same footing with a brief overview of the context for the group and the questions you’re starting with
  • Co-develop group norms. It builds ownership of shared norms.
  • Develop an authorship policy
    • What contributions warrant authorship on a paper? Collecting data? Contributing data? Being part of a discussion that sparked the idea? Developing figures?
    • But also, how do group members learn that a paper is being developed?
      • Can all group members opt-in to any paper?
      • Or is everyone an author until they opt out?
      • Network and group authorship policies are more complex than tallying contributions to a single paper.
  • Conduct a “pre-mortem” to talk about worries and visions for a healthy group dynamic
  • Recognize who you are as a group, culturally, and any power dynamics that might entail
    • Sometimes, simply articulating the potential for oppressive power dynamics can give group members the confidence to assert themselves

Throughout the process

  • Get to know each other
    • Use creative icebreakers to break a pattern of silence
    • Invest in “social time”
  • Value and accommodate various styles of contribution
    • Fast and slow thinkers,
    • Visual, auditory and kinesthetic learners,
    • Synchronous and asynchronous contributions
  • Practice “cultural norming” by educating participants on systemic/structural oppression and racism and ways to work against our own implicit biases

At intervals

  • When you find yourself questioning whether a practice or activity is still valuable, ask each member for a quick read on whether the group should “Start, Stop, or Continue” the activity

Establishing a Project Management Plan

As your group gets started working together, it it easy to assume that you will use the tools and planning strategies that the PI or project organizer is used to using. That information should carry some weight. They will devote a lot of time to the project. But also try to survey the group at an early meeting so that you know which platforms other group members use. Make decisions based on balancing platforms that will allow maximum group participation with those that will make the work easiest for those likely to be doing the work.

Consider:

  • How will you communicate? (Email, Slack, Google Group, Discourse, Discord, Zulip…) Who maintains the list, and how?
    • A regular “update” email (every 2 weeks or once a month) is a great practice
    • You will likely generate lots of ideas for papers and other products. How do group members who didn’t happen to be in that conversation find out about them?
  • Where will you share common documents and how will you organize them? (Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Other…email them around :eye_roll:)
  • How will you keep track of relevant references (a file folder of pdfs?, Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley…)? Each has strengths and weaknesses–consider how participants are most likely to contribute and how easy they will be to fnd later.
  • Do you need a shared calendar or virtual bulletin board? Consider Google Calendar, GitHub Pages, Quarto, or a simple WordPress or Weebly site, but beware of the time it can consume.
  • Who is doing most of the coding?
    • What platfoms do they use?
    • Do others need to see/weigh in on the code? Can they access those platforms? How will they get notice that their input is needed?
  • How do you write together? The platform matters, but so does the process.
    • Some groups outline as a team and then assign sections to different writers.
    • In others, everyone contributes figures, and concepts as bullet points, but a single author crafts the actual prose.
    • Suggesting and track changes features are great for modest edits on a nearly completed document, but can be overwhelming when a paper is still in development.
      • An alternative is to create a read-only version of a document with line numbers and ask for comments by line number.
      • It is also helpful to be clear about what kind of input you are after at each stage of writing. Are you just trying to get the analysis clear or do you want wordcraft?

Data Sources

Some sources of data–such as modern remote sensing products, NEON data, and census data–have very clear, explicit ways to access and download them or work with them in the cloud. But the most interesting synthesis questions often involve combining such “big” data with other data sources that may have been collected manually, by a variety of methods and different technicians, over decades.

What kinds of data sources might you consider including in a synthesis project, in addition to your own or others’ field data?

Data Use Principles

There are a few ethical and practical guidelines that will save you a lot of trouble if you can adhere to them from the start of a project.

  • Data sources should always be cited
  • Keep track of your data sources (sources, permissions, notes, related metadata, what’s included)
  • Keep the data that everyone is uding in one place (single source of truth)
  • Communicate with data creators whenever possible
    • This doesn’t need to be onerous and it can uncover issues and opportunities associated with data sources.

Dear Dr. Smith,

I am working on a synthesis of soil inverbrate diversity across North America and would like to include your dataset titled “xxx” (doi: xxx). We have downloaded the data from yyy repository, but wanted to let you know we are using it and to inquire whether there is any additional context we should be aware of or related datasets we should be sure to include. A short description of the synthesis project follows. Please let me know by xxx date if you have any questions or concerns with our use of this data.

Thank you,

Dear Dr. Smith,

I am working on a synthesis of soil inverbrate diversity across North America and would like to include the dataset behind your paper titled {xxx} (doi:{yyy}), which seems highly relevant. Would it be possible to obtain the data? Ideally, we would access it through through a public repository, such as the Environmental Data Initiative, which offers assistance in curation and submission of datasets. Either way, we would credit you as the data originator and want you know we are using it. If there is any additional context we should be aware of or related datasets we should be sure to include, please let us know. A short description of the synthesis project follows.

Thank you,

Should all data contributors be offered authorship? How would you handle a data creator who demanded authorship in order to use their data?

There are no pat answers for this situation, but having agreed-on authorship guidelines is really valuable when it comes up. We’ll cover that in more detail soon, but for now, there are a few questions to ask yourself.

  • Are they really committed enough to join the working group and contribute to the papers? If so, it may be a good investment.
  • How much work will they need to put in to make the data ready?
  • How critical is this particular data source for your analysis?
  • You will need to make your derived dataset public. Are they placing conditions on the use of their data that make that impossible?

Keeping Track of Data

We’ve pulled together a few of the forms that we have use to keep track of the data that synthesis groups plan to use…

Sample spreadsheet for initial data surveying

Once you get into the details of the process, you’ll want to track some more specific information, but you’ll hear more about that in Module 2.

  • URL to the data (and metadata) source
  • Sampling location and site (including both coordinates and associated organizations)
  • Short Data Description
  • Coverage Dates/Frequency
  • Filename (as stored on Google Drive or shared file repository)
  • URL to Files (cloud drive, website, server; e.g. google drive link)
  • Date the data was last accessed / downloaded
  • Data Creator/Owner’s Name
  • Data Creator/Owner’s Email/contact
  • Working group participant who got the data (Name)
  • Used in your analysis? (Y/N)
  • Any additional notes or decisions about how the data is or will be harmonized and analyzed