Although some efforts in biology, such as the Protein Structure initiative successfully encouraged group efforts, there is considerable pressure for many researchers to compete for grants, papers, and credit rather than collaborate. Should we try to change promotion and other credit criteria to value collaborative work as well as individual accomplishments?
I think the silo effect is strongly encouraged by small grant funding structures. Program grants that rank based on collaboration would help enormously.
I winder if granting agencies would be interested in considering supplementary grants to have two or more groups work together rather than in competition. Perhaps programs such as this would help and also reduce the blow from the loss of PSI program funding.
A program which works reasonable well in Germany (BMBF):
"Preparatory Measures for International Cooperation": BMBF provides financial support to German universities, research institutes and small and medium-sized enterprises for cooperation in science and research with partners from selected countries and for work in particular scientific and technical fields. This support is intended to help fund exploratory activities and the preparation of projects. Feasibility studies and pilot investigations may be funded as well. Applicants for funding should take note of country-specific thematic orientations and specific funding initiatives.
More: http://www.foerderinfo.bund.de/en/204.php
Regards: Frank
I assume that this procedure has already started at the EU-level funded projects. In the new framework h2020 and FP7 hug projects with regards to the amount of funding and partnership (flagship project): http://graphene-flagship.eu/ and https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/.
I am not involved but the following is from The EU homepage:
FET Flagships support ambitious, large-scale, long-term, science-driven, goal-oriented, roadmap-based research initiatives tackling grand challenges in S&T. They are expected to provide transformational impact on science, technology and society, lead to novel innovation clusters in Europe and facilitate alignment of national and regional research efforts. FET Flagships require a long-term commitment of all key stakeholders sharing a common scientific vision and a joint effort of EU and national programmes to provide a large shared financial support. FET will provide the main EU support in H2020 of the two FET flagships already chosen under FP7: 'Graphene' and 'Human Brain Project' (HBP).
Some of the partners are not really happy with some hesitation about the outcome. I am not also convinced that very large collaborative project bring success in implementation, rather a moderate collaborative project .
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