Generally speaking, since research in sustainability requires both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and moreover, it involves environmental, social, and economic spheres dealing with various time spans as well as disciplines, a team or an individual working on this area should either:

- have the expertise and experience in all abovementioned areas (which typically needs a large team).

Or

- narrow down the scope of their research projects and remain focused on the areas they know well.

Dear Maria Laura,

I think that you can benefit from reading: "Enhancing the Effectiveness of Team Science". It is a kind of guidebook. Really useful. It can be downloaded for free here: https://www.nap.edu/catalog/19007/enhancing-the-effectiveness-of-team-science

Best regards,

Adam

Thank you Magnus, Aryan, Asam for answering so quickly.

I am looking for key success factors that are specific for sustainability science.

For example, it is absolutely true that it is important to publish in a highly ranked journal in order. This type of peer review provides quality control and also legitimacy in the scientific community. But Sustainability Science must also have social legitimacy. How eould you obtain it? Where or how would you like to publish or share your results in order to obtain social quality assurance and legitimacy.?

Also, Suistainability Science usually requieres large groups. But narrowing the scope of the research sometimes can degrade its quality since this type of research builds on systemic knowledge and narrowing the scope too much may leave important connections or links out of the view of the rresearch team.

I have read "Enhacing the Effectiveness of Team Science" and I value it highly but it seems to me that we still have a long way to go. There are a lot of institutional or system obstacles and restraints but there are also lots of difficulties working together in transdsciplinary teams and developing the boundary objects that the research team needs.

Quite frequently researchers in transdisciplinary teams invalidate other researchers views and activities. Also, they start having identity problems (especially young researchers). This is because we develop our identities in our families, our professions, our jobs and our team of friends by comparing ourselves with the rest of the group. When your comparison group changes (as when you move from disciplinary research to transdisciplinary research or the other way around) your identity will probably change (or at least you are in for some trouble and disconfort).

Working in a transdisciplinary research team can be socially rewarding (if you do it right) but it will be probably full of hardships. So, how can we increase the success of Suistainability Science research teams and researchers without increasing the hardships?.

Thank you again,

Maria Laura

I think it's impossible to do a great sustainability research without having a large team or without facing many problems unless one's a well-experienced researcher. Some tasks are just difficult and complex so that there's no magical shortcuts to rocket the productivity.

Aryan, I agree that sustainability research requires collaboration to obtain access to different types of relevant knowledge and that- usually, means large teams.

The Key Success Factors are a planning tool that focuses on areas of current operating activities of an organization or team (and its associated skills and resources) that must receive concentrated attention from managers to ensure future success. The Key Success Factors are not shortcuts; they enable management to establish a difference between most important and important tasks and process in order to concentrate efforts on the most important. For example, when people started to live in smaller homes, the size of home electrical appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, microwaves, etc.) became a key (or critical) success factor.

As soon as we start identifying Key Success Factors for Sustainability Science we will be able to make big improvements in Sustainability Science teams success.

One Key Factor of Success is probably the development of collaboration skills since, as you said, Sustainability Science teams are bigger and they usually need to collaborate with stakeholders.

Maria Laura Ferreyra Yes, regarding your description on "Key Factors", in my opinion, "integration" of various areas of research, experimentation and expertise is the most important key factor in sustainability science.

I agree. I have identified probable elements that may be key success factors in Sustainability Science research teams: One of them would be collaborating for decision making amidst diversity. The other one may be the skill of collaborating to create joint system models for problem solving (boundary objects).

Dear Maria Laura Ferreyra

Question:

What would be key factors of success for a Sustainability Science research team?

this is a very important issue that requires scientific research.

It seems to me that it is good that there was a discussion in the question of this question.

This is a very interesting and scientifically important topic.

Because the topic is very important so I still read the answers, I follow the interesting discussion.

Maria, I'm probably thinking differently about this than you. One of the places I used to work at had a team of engineers, planners, biologists, GIS techs, etc. It was understood that no one professional had any specific 'authority' over any of the rest - we all listened and respected all views.

In my travels, one of the weaknesses I have found in the study of Sustainability Science is the narrowness of academia - we end up with 'an inch wide and a mile deep', because that is the quickest to train and saleable at the highest price. But that does no good when dealing with the complexities of Sustainability. Knowing that, some of the universities around here are advertising that they are trying to build up the 'T-shaped' engineer; in effect, having lots of depth in one narrow field, and a little coverage in everything else. But the 'everything-else' tends not to include history, political science, psychology, etc - all required to actually implement any kind of complex socio-econo-biological systemic change.

My advice would be to include several 'Expert Generalists' - maybe not academics, but with a broad enough background to be able to communicate with all of the Specialists, and note where the gaps and weaknesses are. People pleased with challenging orthodoxy, and not afraid of argument. The generalists may end up being the core team, using specialists on demand to answer key questions.

Hello to all. Some days ago I wrote a long answer but I do not see it. I have written now an answer 5 times and the page erases it and introduces the name of somebody who is not involved in this question.

I am trying to answer to you all, especially to Douglas. The problem seems to arise when I follow directions and use @. I will try later.

Any luck, Maria?