How to form a consortium: Maximizing publication output as a strategy for more effective collaboration
How the impact factor and H-index limit consortium projects
One of the most pervasive metrics in academia is the number of publications and the prestige of the journals in which those publications appear.
The problem is that only the first and last author get the majority of the credit for a publication.
When you are working on a consortium project, this means that if you are going to write a paper, you are incentivized to hold on to the work until you have an initial draft of the manuscript.
Then you can be the first or last author because you produced the draft.
Thus, even though you are working in collaboration, the silo mentality persists, at least until there is a first draft of a paper.
When someone or a small team holds on to their results until they can produce a first draft of a paper, they and the rest of the consortium miss out.
Everyone misses out on the opportunity to tap into collective intelligence.
How to form a consortium: Collective intelligence
"Collective intelligence is the capacity for the group to hold and explore the space between and then act on emergent insights." (1)
This is a great way to understand collective intelligence. Holding and exploring ‘the space between’ is about combining expertise.
Differences in expertise keep people apart. Differences create space.
If two people have similar expertise, they are close to each other. They think more alike.
Combining their ideas and thoughts may add value, but it's not going to be nearly as great as when highly different sets of expertise are brought together.
The best way to work together is to see and understand the thoughts and ideas of others.
When a paper is drafted, it is too late. The real potential of the power of collaboration lies in the early phases of a research or innovation effort.
It is about accessing the experience of others to quickly solve the challenges you face. Others can also help you expand what you are doing.
It might be as simple as pointing out where you can find a dataset that can be used to validate your findings.
Or it could be some knowledge about how to get a particular type of cell culture or assay to work.
A better way to organize the publication process in a consortium
A better approach to organizing the publication process in a consortium project would be to produce some initial results or an initial outline, and expose it to the wider consortium in a meeting, in person or virtual.
Then you can access the collective intelligence of a group. However, this does raise an important question.
How do you deal with deciding on authorship if you are being more open?
You decide on the title, content, and authors of a paper before you even begin working on the research.
You may then ask, how do you do that when you do not know your research results?
For most research, you generally know what you are going to produce. You may not know the results but you know what you are going to work on.
It's a paper about a disease population based on data from a cross-sectional study.
It may be a paper on mechanisms for a particular disease process based on in vitro models.
The point is you can outline in general terms what a paper will be about and roughly what the content will be.
That is usually enough to determine who should be the first and last author and what journal you should be targeting.
If there is a defined process and agreement to adhere to an a priori authorship determination within your project, then those producing research can feel comfortable about revealing what they are doing early in the process.
They can bring their challenges to a wider group. They can expose initial results.
This has another effect. Meetings where you just see slide after slide of the concept that formed the project and how the work is going well are boring and do not generate much in the way of energy.
Meetings where initial results are shown and problems are presented are lively and full of energy.
To do this, the first step is to establish a publication policy. Most consortium projects have such a policy, but it is unlikely to include the a priori determination of authorship.
Make a decision with consortium partners that everyone will follow a publication process where the lead and last authors are determined ahead of time.
Practical implementation
Set up a form or a spreadsheet with fields to fill in. Include the topic of the paper, authors, target journal, and an indication of what stage of the process you are in.
This should be available for all those in the consortium to see.
Then there should be a meeting where the entries are regularly reviewed. Once a month is too much because it takes time to make much progress on the research. However, if you have a lot of papers, having papers once a month and focusing on different portions of the list works well.
As you will see in the examples below, you can end up with hundreds of papers in this list. It is also useful to have a simple process of reminding people of the paper and that they are meant to be making progress on it. If the research is ongoing and analysis has not been done, this is less important.
However, you can do a lot of the writing of a paper before you begin the analysis. You can write the background introduction section as well as the methods.
Examples of an effective consortium publication process
In the U-BIOPRED project, which was one of the first Innovative Medicines Initiative projects that started in 2008, the list was at one point more than 200.
In that project, we set up a wiki where people were adding in sections for the project such as a statistical plan, what datasets were needed or being used. It was also where anyone in the project could comment and contribute to the paper.
These days, there is a real opportunity to do something like this using community platforms that have easier-to-use interfaces and promote online dialogue. This list still exists and is still used 12 years after the end of the funding period of the project. U-BIOPRED consortium has published more than 150 papers using this process.
The AirPROM project was a virtual physiological human project that built a multi-scale computational model of the lung. It was more of publication list than a project list. It had a significant impact with over 100 papers published during the lifetime of the project.
Why does this process work?
This process works because it addresses the fundamental barrier to getting things done in a consortium project.
People are not unmotivated to do the work, or incompetent. In fact, consortium projects are typically aimed at achieving important and ambitious goals so it is easy to find motivation to contribute.
For a similar reason, the people engaged in consortium projects tend to be the best in their field.
The barrier is that they have too much going on and just need to be reminded. This explains why this process led to some stunning results in a project such as U-BIOPRED and AirPROM.
Most importantly, this publication/project development process plays to the fundamental strength of consortium projects - working together.
The strength is accessing the collective intelligence of the group as a whole.
Exposing one's problems or one's initial results to a wide array of expertise, perspective and experience can result in transformational insights that lead to faster problem solving and the identification of opportunities to work together.
When you present results or an outline of a paper early in the process, you are also prototyping.
Prototyping a powerful means of communication. Often people do not know what you mean no matter how well you describe it. They need to be shown.
Prototypes can be a great way to bridge the gap between experts and diverse stakeholder perspectives.
“One team leader insisted: ‘You have to present tangible examples. Prototyping… shows that you have everything in order; that you know the outcomes that you want to achieve.’ Creating a minimum viable product not only helps to shorten development cycles; it also helps to convince stakeholders of an idea’s value — especially those who are not involved in the process from the very beginning or those with whom the designer has little direct contact.’ (2)
Great consortia go beyond publications.
Early prototypes, preliminary results, and paper outlines open the door to expanded collaboration.
They lay the groundwork that allows collaboration to flourish.
Papers help to structure the ‘space between’.
So, while great consortia go beyond publications, the process of producing publications is a collaboration multiplier that enables a consortium to build up the trust and understanding that is needed to do the work beyond publications when set up in the right way.
Summary
Consortium projects have the potential to be about much more than publishing papers in the publication process.
Building a process that protects authorship positions early on enables people to think and work together more effectively.
When you are considering how to form a consortium keep in mind that what makes it possible for consortia to go beyond incremental advancement is effective collaboration built on trust.
It empowers them to take aim at making a real difference, including going for cures.
Are you ready to take on a complex and ambitious project?
If you are let’s talk.
We have worked with leading researchers and disease foundations across multiple disease to design and develop strategic plans and consortium projects.
The first step is to schedule an Impact Strategy Call. During this call we will explore your goals and review funding opportunities.
Schedule a time using this link: Schedule Impact Strategy Call
Or email me directly: scottwagers@biosciconsulting.com
We are now accepting up to three new clients for the second half or 2024 .
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The Art of Co-creation Bryan R Rill and Matti M Hämäläinen
Open Innovation Generates Great Ideas, So Why Aren’t Companies Adopting Them, Dirk Deichmann, Ieva Rozentale, and Robert Barnhoorn, HBR December 20, 2017 Open Innovation Generates Great Ideas, So Why Aren’t Companies Adopting Them? (hbr.org)
