1. What are three ways that collaboration in research is encouraged in today's research environment? What are three challenges to collaborative research? What ways have you, or could you, collaborate on your research project?
There are many ways collaboration in research is encouraged in today’s research. According to the textbook, interdisciplinary training programs at both the pre and post doctoral levels encourage collaboration. These environments create new researchers who know the benefits of collaboration between different disciplines. Also, major funding agencies have helped increase collaboration efforts in research. According to the textbook, they “make funds available for researchers to reach across established …show more content…
According to the textbook, collaboration poses a problem with the peer review process for grants. Basically, a grant application might consist of various experimental procedures for different fields and the group of individuals reviewing the application might not have the diversity to criticize the entire application. Furthermore, another problem with collaboration is trying to find a suitable individual to collaborate with. The textbook states that finding a researcher who is qualified and willing to collaborate with the individual is a very difficult task. This takes time and could require multiple attempts in order to find a suitable collaborator. Finally, collaboration becomes problematic in regards to publication. According to the textbook, “discipline-specific journals do not always embrace the interdisciplinary approach.” This could result in researchers being more reluctant to enter into a collaboration agreement if they know they are putting themselves at a disadvantage when it comes to publication of the research. Currently, my research is on stereotyping and prejudice in our society. I could try and collaborate with a sociologist on this topic in order to bring in a different perspective or I could try and bring in a biologist in order to see where in the brain these attitudes are formed and if there is a genetic component to making individuals more susceptible to forming prejudicial