I would say that a good team makes a good science. When you have in a team people who aren´t talking to each other and don´t cooperate like they should, they can´t bring excellent results.

In my view, need for a lab is based on the research work that is carried out in it. There are no good or bad labs as far as i concerned. Every lab has its own place in research. But the magnitude of research determine its name. of course, its obviously necessary to pay attention to everybody in the lab as a whole or sometimes individual attention is required to get a good progress in research.

I would say that a good team makes a good science. When you have in a team people who aren´t talking to each other and don´t cooperate like they should, they can´t bring excellent results.

I agree with Terézia. Talking about results and also of problems are very important for good research. In talks you can find solutions for problems, but in most cases only if the members of a group work together not against each other.

In my point of view, laboratory will be consider or get to known as best laboratory when the out put of the laboratory in terms of research publication as well as new new research finding will be more. And to do this a laboratory should have a handsome amount of money, which ultimately comes from the Grants. And in order to get any sort of grant you have to means the collective effort of students + professors are required. And most important thing the professor or the head of the institute has to be active, energetic, encouraging, knowledgeable, as well as have to have a quality of good thinking ability..

every lab personnel should know about the basic chemical and bio-safety rules and guidelines,how to deal with the lab hazards then should know about the apparatus and its troubleshooting.

This is an excellent question. But the answer has so many aspects. One should perhaps include the carreer path of successful lab leaders. Unfortunately, this often has nothing to do with excellent research or own ideas or a good lab atmosphere or working conditions for scientists including students in science are bad everywhere - and the chance for a carreer or an own lab are extremely limeted. First, all the professors kids need to get promoted; the rest of the open positions can be given to those who supported their boss in many ways for years. Later, very good results and ideas are leaked out to others to promote their carreers instead of the originator of a research project. And even if a lab is excellent and becomes famous, it may just be successful for 5 years, then other themes will be in the mainstream. I think it is impossible to answer your question in a sense, that one needs just the right people, atmosphere, money. Most important for running a lab is probably to always have enough funding, but this is only possible with the right supporters.

I believe that the main thing you should have in a lab is a good team like Terézia said... It does not matter if they are students, post docs or technicians, if you have a team that is collaborative in their effort to make good science, good ideias and results will lead to good publications... It is not always the best equiped lab (or with the most money) that makes the best science in my point of view, it is the one with the better team... better collaborations...

I want to add that a very important is a good technician or student who is interested in the experimental procedure. Unfortunately, we have a lot of students that are interested in money and to "not to miss working time end", but not in a research.

as I am from a small lab, I know that good founding and equipment are essential. But most important are experienced people who can help you to carry out your experiment.

In my view, to do go science the lab (or the lab leaders) should dedicate a goal/direction that he/she perceive is very important in their research field or will be more important in next 5 or 10 years. Build up a team to work on the direction and keep mind open to any new ideas. Keep the team active. Because of the need of money or grant, a lab might do some collaboration with others on a project that is not close related to their main direction, but the leader should always keep in mind what is their main research goal.

Of course, it needs a good leader for the project as well as the lab members. Sometimes, the project is totally clear and somehow boring (like in the 1980s-1990s cloning and sequencing a new gene, or knocking it out) and three or four completely competing groups in the world just "burn" their postdocs to be the first one - and the others basically losing their scientific lifes and carreers. In such a totally clear project (to become the very first in a race) it needs good planning of each step in order to not waste too much time. Group members should work 7/24 without holidays for several years...

Then there are different, more open project, where the group leader may allow free thinking, crazy ideas and experiments to ask the next question - i.e. creativity. This is risky for all, the group leader and the lab members. It needs a lot of compliance to achieve something although not controlling each little step. For such an ideal scenario, the group could be small but highly diverse allowing different backgrounds to find new ways for a solution.

Most labs have a high fluctuation of lab members - with different carreer expectations. Many PhD students, as well as postdocs, are shocked after having invested decades in university and research and ending up as sales persons.

For becoming a successful lab it also needs the group leader to be within an influencial network - this is probably more important than any good science. Average research results or even plagiarism may lead in Germany to a W3 (full professor)-paid position (although without leading duties), even after a failed Habilitation process (usually needed to even become even an associate professor. So being within the "network" seems much more important than being creative or a really good scientist.

Good infrastructure, advanced instruments, adequate fundings and a good team with a competent leader.

Assuming the lab is equipped state of the art and quality of the people working there is top, the research managers should be curious and critical about everything. Creativity is the key word, but this only works when everything is open to questioning and doubt. There should be no fear for "the wrong" question. Set ambitious goals: only publish in the top 10 % of journals in your sector, don't join projects only to join or as the partner the others' need to get that slight flavour of international collaboration; Try to make a mark in everything.

money

money

money...

sound like ABBA song but true...

money helps hire people

money helps subcontract some experiment, reagents purchase etc etc...

and finally...good networking! helps get you papers going through the ref processes..

Money...it is the most important thing for the development of a laboratory.

A smart leader, a good organizer, a talent computer technician, a capable tester, a genius writer, the most important is, they are like brothers!

Money along with good brain for research is needed 1st. Attitude towards research is important. Then I feel it is the leadership quality which drives the team a head. There will be bad and good researchers and technicians, who can be changed to the best by the leader only. Every lab has negative results most of the time rather expected results. But the only leader with patience and a great team like family, only can have the strength to run smooth and long. Grant of less money can generate a NOVELTY in research, only by a smart leader. I feel it is the leader who defines success.

Money is important but not the determining factor. Some labs have a lot of money but they don't publish good papers though the quantity may be high, while some labs publish very good papers without a lot of money (but for sure later on they will get money.)

After considering it more, one bottleneck for some of the smartest, but non-native english speakers (and writers) is to find one person who can get the results into writing. In my experience this is for many real scientist the biggest issue... what did it help me to find the first mutations in several tumor entities, but not being able (and not fully supported) to publish it on my own.

Yes, money is essential, but the way it is spent is much more critical. People that can work together is essential. A good team leader is an absolute requirement. A clear cut research plan is a must that of course can be tailored as the team moves forward. Focus is instrumental too.

An ideal lab is a place that gets maximal output with minimal monetary input, where output is measured as the number of references the work from the team gets (and not necessarily in which journal the papers end up in). I think the community should come up with some sort of algorithm that takes all input, # people, output, ..., into account that can calculate a yearly "quality" factor for each lab. The quality spectrum is broad: You can have small labs with a relatively small sized budget pushing out high-referenced papers, but you can also have very large labs with an enormous budget pushing out medium-referenced papers. Both labs are successful, but in my opinion, the first option has a higher "quality". I think it is interesting to see that at this point, promotion is still evaluated on a case by case and that there are no clear rules, while so many numeric values are available that could be integrated into some sort of an algorithm. Unfortunately I am not a mathematician.

In addition to a good team and a superb team leader, I think good communication is very important. Weekly meetings are good, but also daily informal communication over lunch or coffee may smooth out potential problems, test new ideas, and share information. This is essential for good science.

As many pointed out, team work is the most important thing. But if lab members have different individual projects, how could them work as a group?

That is really good question...I have tried to find a proper answer for years....

Everything (team leader, team members funds and infrastructure) is important but most important is proper coordination in team to deliver best output.

An idea good enough to attract high level scientist to join to your group. The funding and the production will come then. Easy.

For probably most of us "team work" sounds good, fair, and is a useful way to achieve the expected goals - I was surprised to see a successful but contrary example in science, where it was not necessary: the responsible person argued against any team work, since it may slow down to organize different steps or to share the responsibilites... instead with no team work and five long years working alone the colleague achieved everything necessary for the prize of more work load but full control of each step and full confidence on everything. This may not work for bigger groups and most people are too team oriented to focus on all aspects that responsible, since members of a too large group may not reflect all the details for just a little part of a big picture. Please, don't get me wrong, I just wanted to mention that team work is good for most projects, but for some others it may achieve the opposite.

Of course Robert, you´re right, but it is very sad when you are alone in a group of people and have no person to speak with, because every idea you have is stupid in their eyes, and everything new you want to do or try is not needed in your "team"... I hope you understand what I have ment :-)

First you need to select a burning current or future issue which provide a significant result. This is an important things. This new idea give you all supports like you mentioned. When you get a new significant topics, so many companies, governments, NGOs etc help you to set up a laboratory and you select your research team regarding your topics.

Team leader should be able to motivate his associates by way of new ideas, discussions and encouragement. The leader should give enough academic freedom to his associates to try new ideas. the leader should be able to inspire his associates by setting a good model of him/herself in terms research ideas and goals

Enthusiastic Research Leader, Sincere Research scholars, fine infrastructure and Effective instruments are essential for good lab.

Basically, everything is within the responsibility of a strong leader. Leadership includes: getting enough research money, i.e. writing grant applications and publishing, as well as managing the expenses; attracting the best or suitable members for a team, designing a project and supervising the team in all necessary areas --- but that can be done in so many and extremely different ways... from leaving major scientific and experimental decisions up to the team members (which I would prefer), up to step-by-step decisions for the students (that can also be the most straightforward approach in extremely competitive situations and where too much freedom would slow down a well defined project too much, but basically this reduces a PhD student to an underpaid lab technician).

Unfortunately, most groups don't get a Science, Nature and Cell paper, but it is the leader to make all important decisions and to evaluate the importance of the results.

Team work:

"Coming together is a beginning.

Keeping together is progress.

Working together is success."

- Henry Ford

And

Team leader:

"A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He doesn't set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the quality of his actions and the integrity of his intent. In the end, leaders are much like eagles... they do not flock; you find them one at a time."

--unknown

There are different and valuable opinions above, mine will be less serious concerning mol-biol/biochemical laboratories I visited. Just to have a first impression when you enter you should watch:

- If the flowers on the window are in good condition don't try to do the science there. It means the people are having a lot of time for other, than research activities.

- Lack of small mess means or nothing is being done, or there is someone to strict about the order.

- Bottles on the shelf with a bit of old dust, but nicely composed because of their size/color. It means old buffers should end up in the sink. The order should be according to the use of the stuff.

- Empty spaces. Immediately escape please! You always need the place for the new fridge, centrifuge, when you are producing the samples.

- Strict breakfast/lunch/working hours. If all of the group is following the boss for the lunch, how they can plan a six-hours experiments? Why not to leave the lab after two hours, if you have nothing to do? Especially last week you spent 60 hours there.

Dedication, patience, a good mentor and a team, and finally a popular research subject are crucial for running and keep funding a research lab.

It is paramount to have stable, long-term (at least several years) institutional funding for the salaries of the lab head and a few key staff. Funding a lab entirely by applying for grants is too precarious. In fact, a number of public and private granting agencies will not give grants to a principal investigator unless he has a stable position--e.g. an institutionally-funded professorship and some institutional resources. It is a bit like the old adage about banks: they won't loan you money unless you can prove you don't need it.

Yes, a solid funding is important. Especially for starting labs this is indeed dependent from the institution and its policies. Often, the new group leader has to waste a lot of time to apply for even basic and first lab equipment - some few institutions (I think there was once one immunology one in Basel) just granted any new group leader a good starting package to just buy all the necessary material to start a new lab (basic, but different from lab to lab).

Another point is that most groups not only consist of long-term staff, but also have a highly dynamic structure with many new people to come and some leaving after a few months or years. This can lead bring together new views, but also has some risk of leaking out wonderful approaches and know-how to competitors (in 2001 I was the first to measure specifically VLA-4 / VCAM-1 interactions on living cells with AFM - that idea, project and some of the know-how leaked out by a colleague to his former lab colleague - I didn't know that leak until similar things were done by others...).

@Robert Eibi

You have raised issues that are absolutely essential to run a research lab. A good research lab not only needs funding, modern equipment, a team leader and a good team, but equally important is the need to comply with 'strong work ethics' by maintaining and respecting confidentiality in the workplace-the lab. A good lab should therefore have policies and procedures that maintain the integrity of confidential or potentially compromising information handled in the workplace.

Issam pointed out how “strong work ethics” is important. What you should be careful about, during the first talk with the people from the lab you want to enter is:

- We want to show…. (instead of we want to analyze/check/find how is it working/find the missing part of this puzzle… ) It means the boss has already found what should be proven. With such an order all the group will be doing the experiments until the result desired by the boss will be given to him. About the previous 30 results are excluding the desired one, they will say were non-conclusive/artifacts or they just politely forgot to say it happen…

- We are working on the model X using the technique Y… (instead our scientific question is...). Such a group you usually observed ten years after the main discovery. All the lab was set-up in order to explore the preliminary results. But ten years after with no scientific questions you have people thinking only what combination of the available equipment/materials/organisms/chemicals can be done else. Usually they find the same observation, or if they will add to much of something, the cells would die…

On observing some research groups closely, I think several factors contributes in running a productive research lab i.e., funding, skillful and motivated manpower ( with a core sub-group surrounded by replaceable researchers), work ethics etc. Most part of these things are to be driven and shouldered by a good team leader. One who is good in science and equally in interpersonal skills. He is like the pivot and backbone of the group.

Coming to the questions why some labs are more productive in quality than others, I personal feel in most cases it depends on the quality of research/mentoring the team leader accomplished/received in his doctoral and post doctoral research. It becomes difficult for good researcher trained in a mediocre lab to do high quality research though he has immense potential. This problem is faced by many researchers from developing countries, though one can find exceptions. Its takes a concerted effort to fill the gap and this can be done by observing the successful groups and constantly reinventing ourselves .

We understand knowledge in silos or columns. Most research builds the columns higher by reinforcing (echoing) previous work in the same area. It's easy to get such ideas published and therefore research productivity is high, if uninteresting and un-groundbreaking. In my view, the best research breaks new ground and throws established ideas into a questionable space - like the theory of relativity did for Newtonian logic. To generate this kind of research, you must approach the subject from the outside - like Newton did. He had to take a year off his work, away from Cambridge - with no supervisory control over his ideas before he came up with his theories. Research like this throws the whole silo into question, and naturally it generates a lot of fear and resistance, but if it finds support, it places the old ways of thinking in mothballs.

Well set goals, good working atmosphere and good team effort are essential to run a successful research lab

a good team leader with well equipped instruments that is especially important for the type of project going on. The environment should be motivating with all the team members working towards a specific goal. There are cases when labs with good amount of funding and equipments are unable to get a high impact paper whereas a mediocre lab may do. For a good scientific research, all the factors mentioned in the question are important and having their own significant value.

Not sure if I mentioned it already; sometimes (unfortunately) a "killer instinct" appears to get faster promotion than scientifically honest behaviour. For example, most journals I know have the written policies, that published material should be available to other scientists. To be honest, I think not even the journal editors really think this policy is worth the paper it is written on. I understand that the policy is or was usually worthless for very expensive and rare things like a K.O. mouse strain, but sometimes for some published antibodies, cell lines there is no real reason to prevent to share and fulfill the journal's policies. I heard some very bad examples, when finally some scientist who did not want to share the material really sent out the antibody, but cooked it before sending out... so, maybe those dishonest scientists make a better carreer than those expecting to get a really working antibody. Some mentors may even like the idea to see the competition between 4 killing postdocs on the same projects, who need to sabotage each other to get the small chance of achieving anything... I don't know how fast one should stop such idiots or how to prevent those to get even national awards in Germany.

To run a good lab one also needs financial resources which will have to be generated from the workable ideas and a knowledgeable team who can achieve their goals by individual contributions for a collective goal.

Good professor has good new ideas ,,,good researchers,,,,good chemicals,,,,good devices can follow progress of work ,,,,, financial resources is the thing that control what mentioned before.

The good labs are usually at good institutes that have lots of core facilities, and importantly a critical mass of researchers.

To be a top researcher - you need a good team, that publishes good work, which brings in good funding allowing the employment of good people in the team and so on and so on.

But lets face it, most of us are on very tight budgets.

So how to break into this circle? We need get papers - and in journals which count - as this is what funding agencies usually use to give out funding.

From my limited experience, the top health and medical research laboratories successfully bring together three elements: In vitro cell line work, in vivo animal models and clinical data sets to publish top work and then get funding.

However, the majority of researchers will be missing one or two of these elements. But there are ways to overcome these.

Clinical data sets - you may not have access to clinical patient data directly to mine or interrogate. However, there are numerous public expression data sets now available for you to interrogate.

In vitro cell lines - these will be the mainstay of most laboratories. Try to use a large panel. Ask for people to send you their cell lines. Most are happy to do so. However, if possible, primary cell lines that model your disease/pathology will greatly aid the impact of your work. These can be purchased now as well.

Animal models - the most costly, and often what leads to good publications. There is unfortunately no substitute for this, and if you can't do it your self, a collaboration can usually be set up if you have enough preliminary data.

To be a successful researcher my personal opinion is as follows:

1) Be persistent and find a niche

2) Outsource if you can - don't try to play the technology race game and invest heavily in state of the art equipment which quickly goes out of date, especially when funds are tight.

3) Ask "what expt do I need to do to answer this question", and not: "I can do this experiment what question can I ask that uses this experiment"

4) Invest in yourself occasionally- we often want others to plough money into our ideas. If its that good, we should be prepared to expend a little bit of our own money if need be.

5) Collaborate to get your work published. No use having an idea or data if no body knows about it. Why not have a few extra authors and get published.

Many great points have been made in the other answers, but it’s key to remember the Anna Karenina principle: a deficiency in one of many factors causes labs to be less productive. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina begins: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” To be successful and productive, one has to avoid numerous shortcomings, as statistically there are many ways for a dataset to violate the null hypothesis and only one in which all premises are satisfied. So successful labs largely do everything right most of the time, realizing it’s not a perfect world, so all labs make mistakes and have problems at times. Less successful labs consistently make one or more possible mistakes that limit their productivity and/or quality. Yes -as noted by others "creative research. critical thinking and innovation" coupled to sufficient facilities and resources are certainly needed. Furthermore, a lab leader, like the captain of a ship, has to maintain work quality and know where they are heading, but I think it is better if this heading is more a compass than a roadmap. Overall it’s beneficial to be positive and enthusiastic in the face of problems - which will happen all the time despite one's best efforts. Especially when the going gets very tough, it is important to find positive solutions and work with the group to meet challenges in a productive way.

Whatever happens, make sure your group has the best possible communication – for people to work together, it is important that everyone knows the current state of things, even things as trivial as which lab equipment is working better or if a program is giving problems. For collaborations, projects, grants and proposals, keeping communication and active cooperation has to be a priority. When someone new joins the lab (students, post docs, technicians), a leaders’ first priority should be to help make them successful in something to give the new person confidence and the ability to contribute to the group as a whole. It never hurts to seek advisors and mentors, as a wise person can learn something from anyone.

Just as true expertise involves looking at each problem in terms of its unique features from first principles rather than trying to fit problems into familiar classes and then using a formula to solve them, I strongly believe that a group leader needs to look at everyone as a unique individual and then direct and train them in ways that help optimize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. I'd avoid labs where group leaders try to clone themselves, and people are viewed as largely similar but may have "good hands" or be "great workers". Teaching everyone to work well with others is part of learning to do high impact science and solve big problems efficiently. Furthermore, teaching group members what a good research question looks like plus how to approach challenges, write papers and write proposals with high quality and impact is as important as teaching people the techniques needed for their field.