Collaboration in neuroscience: the young PI perspective

“As members of the FENS-KAVLI network of excellence, representing neuroscientists at the early and mid stages of their career, we feel that we are a generation that is used to collaborations and greatly appreciates their importance. Many of us were educated in a generation that witnessed large collaborative projects, such as the genome project, that changed the mindset of scientists and the scientific culture. We often work in open spaces designed to foster collaboration, belong to multidisciplinary networks or part of integrative research centers. We have been witnessing this change to collaboration across most scientific disciplines as more scientists are working and publishing together. An issue of Nature today has a similar number of Letters to an issue published 60 years ago, but at least four times more authors (Greene, 2007; Adams, 2012).” […]

“As a young PI, you are about to, or will eventually, engage in collaborative research projects from which you will gain a lot of experience, expertise and generate scientific output you would not have been able to achieve on your own. In some cases, you will initiate the collaboration and, in others, the collaboration will find you. Sometimes you will contribute to the concept and, other times, you will provide a unique expertise and technique that a collaborative research project would rely on. Each case is different and most importantly, it is a human adventure, involving not only yourself and your collaborator, but members of each lab and some of the joint resources. It is therefore very important to be well equipped to tailor your collaborative projects to fit your needs and your working habits.” […]