22/10/2015the university of waikato - te whare wananga o waikato1 brcss ii sssri august 25, 2010...

20/04/23THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO - TE WHARE WANANGA O WAIKATO

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BRCSS II SSSRIAugust 25, 2010

Cross-Boundary Research Collaborations

John Gibson

Department of Economics

What type of boundaries?

• Disciplinary• Addressing your second question:

• When does inter-disciplinary research work?

• National• Some “new thinking” is needed on the optimal strategy for the

university

• Institutional

Note that my remarks will relate particularly to publishing in peer reviewed journals rather than to other forms of collaboration

20 April 2023© THE UNIVERSITY OF WAIKATO • TE WHARE WANANGA O WAIKATO 2

Inter-disciplinary research

• What prompts?• Research funders, esp FoRST

• E.g. multi-year ICT project between Economics and Management Communication

• Successful for FoRST reports but not for ongoing academic collaboration due to the distinctive differences in research style needed by journals in each discipline

• Technological disruption, blurs disciplinary boundaries

• E.g. improved availability of geo-referenced survey data and remote sensing data, due to growing poer of GIS, increases our collaborations with geographers

• Proximity

• E.g. collaboration with anthropologist when we were both part of an interdisciplinary Pacific Studies research centre


“New thinking” – some context– possible peculiarity of economics• slowdown in speed of publishing (Ellison, JPE, 2002)

• 1970 average of 6 months from submit to accept

• Now over two year lag for top journals

• Average of 18 months for field journals, longer if they are quantitative

• “Revise and resubmit” has become the modal outcome• 1970 average of 0.5 revisions before acceptance, now average is

two revisions required before acceptance

• ‘publishing as prostitution’ (Frey, Public Choice, 2003) where referees with no property rights in the journal impose their will on the content of the published paper

Initial submission usually only the half-way point in a collaboration


Three implications of this slowdown

• Required duration for a collaboration exceeds the horizon for most funding sources

• And also bureaucratic horizons

• E.g. adjuncts typically for three years but median time working on an article before it is accepted is four years

• The largest investment in international collaboration by UoW is in funding overseas conference travel, but this becomes increasingly mistimed ( poorly targeted)

• Many researchers adapt sub-optimal publication portfolios geared to low impact, high quantity

• See Tressler and Anderson for evidence, UoW vs other Econ

• Low powered internal incentives for quality exacerbate this poor choice of publication mix


When/how to support collaboration?Subsiding conference attendance

Earlier era

• Pre-internet working paper series

• Up or down referee decisions


Conference outcomes

• publicity• polishing

Research carried out

18-24 months

Subsidize conference attendance?Or, boot camp for revise and resubmits?Current era• Dissemination via on-line working paper series

• conference presentation not needed to publicise papers• Ellison shows top departments ignoring field journals, which serve no

purpose in publicising research given low cost of on-line publicity


Conference outcomes

• publicity • polishing

Research carried out

36-48 months

Revise, resubmit, ….


Some NZ evidence on the growing importance of collaborators (within and across national boundaries)

1999

• 48% of articles were co-authored

• Amongst co-authored articles average of 2.31 authors

2007

• 67% of articles were co-authored

• Amongst co-authored articles average of 2.46 authors

• Publication records of all academic economists in NZ in 1999 (n=108) and 2007 (n=130)

• joint work with John Tressler and David Anderson

• compare patterns amongst journal articles published in the previous six years


One economist’s experience…

• in my first decade of publishing only 14% of articles were with co-authors and none with international co-authors (at the time the work was carried out rather than published)

• since then, 83% with co-authors, 43% with international co-authors


Types of collaborators (introspective…)

• Averaged 7.5 co-authors per year since 2001

• In any given year, ca. 40% of these co-authors have been international

• C.f. 30% who were current or former students and 30% who were domestic collaborators

• Only two years when the number of international co-authors in that year exceeded two

• May be an atypically simple experience compared with those collaborating with many international co-authors in any given year

• Four main repeat international collaborators• Former supervisor

• Former student

• Two peers (one link made on sabbatical, one when at UoC)

Returns to mobility (introspective…)

• the two peer-to-peer collaborations reflect the value of mobility and face-to-face contact

• 12 months at UoC allowed research relationship with Bonggeun Kim to form

• repeated conference interactions with David McKenzie over 2-3 year period centred on a 12 month study leave

• previous attempt to recruit him into NZ collaboration failed, even though he is an expat and we had access to resources of NZ Treasury, for work on his PhD topic

• majority of study leaves are now 3-6 months

• Debateable whether this is sufficiently long to build relationship with a new international collaborator



Financial aspects of collaboration• Marsden Fund does not make any FTE contribution for overseas collaborators, unless they have a joint NZ appointment

• RSNZ adopt an overly narrow residential definition of NZ researchers, given the large diaspora

• Options• Fractional appointments at UoW

• very expensive for externally funded grants because of high overheads

• Residual operational funds for conducting the research become very constrained

• Duration of funding less than length of publication cycle

• Travel, accommodation and conferences for collaborators can be funded

• FTE input depends on discretion of their primary employer


What role can advanced communications networks play in facilitating cross-border collaboration?


Timing-specific value of advanced networks

At research initiation…

• Tasks are vague

• Knowledge is diffuse

• Individual responsibilities easily evaded (free-rider problem)

face-to-face meetings typically more productive

Our experience with desk-top video conferencing (EVO) at this stage of research process was unsatisfactory


Timing-specific value of advanced networks (2)

At revise and resubmit stage…

• Tasks are specific

• Knowledge is concentrated within the team

• Individual responsibilities less easily evaded because specific parts of the revision (and revision letter!) can be allocated to individuals

Video conference meetings, sharing of desktops, can be highly productive

• but still easier to procrastinate than with face-to-face meetings

Comments and Discussion

Thanks for listening

22/10/2015the university of waikato - te whare wananga o waikato1 brcss ii sssri august 25, 2010...

Documents

international collaboration

forms of collaboration

research funders

research style

ongoing academic collaboration

disciplinary boundariese

field journals

modal outcome1970 average