Next-Generation Team-Science Platform for Scientific Collaboration

In the past two decades, many branches of science have shifted from individually oriented research toward team-based scientific collaboration. 1-3 Teams of researchers representing different disciplines are often brought together to better solve large-scale and often urgent problems of scientific, societal, and environmental relevance. In addition to combined subject matter expertise and the team´s disciplinary composition, many contex- tual factors such as antecedent conditions, collaborative processes, and support technologies as well as a host of social factors such as team size and organizational complexity can directly influence outcomes in team-based research. From this perspective, emerging research on team science aims at better understanding the key contextual factors related to transdisciplinary scientific collaboration processes and enhancing the outcomes of large-scale collaborative research programs. More specifically, team-science research combines problem-solving frameworks, specialized expertise, and research methods across disciplinary boundaries to help produce high-impact science.