---
title: "Science of team science"
chunk: 1/1
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_of_team_science"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:45:27.166660+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

Science of Team Science (SciTS) is a field of methodology that focuses on understanding and improving cross-disciplinary collaboration in research. The field encompasses conceptual and methodological strategies to understand how teams of scientific researchers can be organized to work more effectively. SciTS initiatives involve understanding and managing factors that affect collaborative science and assessing its outcomes.


== History ==
Since the 1990s, interest and large-scale funding for team-based research initiatives has increased, driven by efforts to tackle complex problems through cross-disciplinary collaboration. Some argue that this trend reflects the growing recognition that addressing multifaceted challenges, such as climate change and public health issues, benefit from partnerships among scientists and practitioners from diverse fields. One SciTS literature review highlighted team science as essential to interprofessional collaborative research. The report called for its integration into health professions education and clinical practice at the University of Minnesota's National Center for Interprofessional Practice and Education.
The interdisciplinary nature of SciTS initially emerged from concerns raised by funding agencies, which sought to assess the performance of team science, understand its added value, evaluate the return on investment in large research initiatives, and inform science policy. The term "science of team science" was first introduced in October 2006 at a conference titled The Science of Team Science: Assessing the Value of Transdisciplinary Research, hosted by the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. The SciTS field was further treated in a supplement to the American Journal of Preventive Medicine published in July 2008. The First Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference was held on April 22–24, 2010, in Chicago, Illinois, organized by the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute.
In 2013, the National Academy of Sciences established a National Research Council Committee on the Science of Team Science to evaluate the current state of knowledge and practice in SciTS. A committee report was published in 2015.
In 2023, Patrick Forscher and colleagues published a review identifying the benefits of big team science, noting that innovations facilitate the collection of larger samples and support efforts toward reproducibility and generalizability. However, concerns exist that team science could increasingly influence funding priorities, potentially shifting emphasis from applied science to more theoretical research areas, as well as leading to unsuccessful large-scale projects. Forscher's recommendations included creating an advisory board and structured by-laws, formalizing feedback mechanisms from contributors, engaging in mentoring, and separating idea generation from project implementation.
In 2026, the discourse shifted towards the management of Big Team Science (BTS). Vaidis and collagues synthesised work from global collaborations such as the Psychological Science Accelerator, ManyBabies, ManyManys and ManyPrimates. Although BTS can challenge statistical power and cross-cultural generalizability, several bureaucratic challenges arise requiring non-traditional management to function as high-fidelity organisational structure from informal collaborative agreements, forward and backward translation and the value of Universal Time (UTC) for global synchronisation and decision making protocols to maintain ethical and epistemological integrity in teams that exceed hundreds of members and labs to address the key questions in science. 


== Methods ==
The definition of a successful team may vary depending on stakeholders. SciTS uses both qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the antecedent conditions, collaborative processes, and outcomes associated with team science. It also considers the organizational, social, and political context that influences team science.
A 2018 review of literature on SciTS published between 2006 and 2016 identified 109 articles. It reported that 75% of these articles used pre-existing data (e.g., archival data), 62% used bibliometrics, over 40% used surveys, and over 10% used interview and observational data.


== See also ==
Integrative learning
Interactional expertise
Interdisciplinarity
Multidisciplinary
Multidimensional network
Transdisciplinary
Global brain


== References ==


== Further reading ==
Azoulay P, Joshua S, Zivin JW (2010). "Superstar Extinction". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 125 (2): 549–589.
Bennett LM, Gadlin H, Levine-Finley S (2010). "Collaboration and team science: a field guide" (PDF). Bethesda, Maryland: National Institutes of Health. Accessed May 28, 2010.
Börner, Katy; Dall'Asta, Luca; Ke, Weimao; Vespignani, Alessandro (2005). "Studying the emerging global brain: Analyzing and visualizing the impact of co-authorship teams" (PDF). Complexity. 10 (4): 57–67. arXiv:cond-mat/0502147. Bibcode:2005Cmplx..10d..57B. doi:10.1002/cplx.20078. ISSN 1076-2787. S2CID 2190589.
Contractor, Noshir (2009). "The Emergence of Multidimensional Networks". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 14 (3): 743–747. doi:10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01465.x. ISSN 1083-6101.
Cummings JN. "A socio-technical framework for identifying team science collaborations that could benefit from cyberinfrastructure". VOSS: National Science Foundation; 2009.
Patel MM, Moseley TW, Nia ES, Perez F, Kapoor MM, Whitman GJ. "Team Science: A Practical Approach to Starting Collaborative Projects." J Breast Imaging. 2021 Jun 16;3(6):721-726. doi: 10.1093/jbi/wbab034. PMID 34805982; PMCID: PMC8599160.
Stokols D, Taylor B, Hall K, Moser R (2006). "The science of team science: an overview of the field" (PDF). Bethesda, Maryland: National Cancer Institute. Accessed May 28, 2010.
Rhoten D (2007). The dawn of networked science. The Chronicle Review. 54. Accessed May 28, 2010.


== External links ==
Annual International Science of Team Science Conference
National Cancer Institute Science of Team Science website