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Collaborative Research

Different research projects have different expectations for collaborative working with some work undertaken on an individual basis and others involving much larger teams. Even if you are working alone it is likely that others will need access to your research and data at some time during your project. Having shared workspaces and agreeing best practices with your team can facilitate effective collaboration.

Sharing research data and resources with collaborators​

There are a variety of tools that can be used to manage shared data and to communicate with your research team. Your group or institution may already use and provide support for collaborative tools you could use or you may want to investigate new tools that meet your needs. Sharing research data during the project with collaborators will have different requirements to how you would share your data with the wider community during the project or at the time of publication.

Examples of systems that can be used for file sharing and communication within a research team include the following collaborative environments. Each link discusses how each tool can be used to support collaborative best practice in those environments.

Some of these tools require licenses and may not be available to collaborators in other countries where their use may be restricted. Considerations around their use include the kinds and volume of data that can be stored there, and how safe the data is from accidental loss or damage, and whether there is adequate protection from unauthorised access for sensitive data and intellectual property.

Giving credit​

An important part of collaborative research is to ensure that everyone who contributed to a project are properly recognised for their work. For academic and other research outputs the CRediT taxonomy is a useful framework to both discussion contributions to projects and also to provide appropriate acknowledgment of contributions to the work.
One issue that can crop up with academic outputs is how to ensure that everyone who contributed to a project receives adequate acknowledgement for their work.

Citing research data​

In the same way that it is important to cite the literature in your publications, it is also important to properly cite and research data that is used as part of your research. Specific requirements may differ between publishers, but these are the key elements that you should include in your data citation:

  • Authors: The individuals or organisations reponsible for the data.
  • Title: A title that meaningfully describes the dataset.
  • Publication year: The year the data was published The name(s) of the individual(s) or organization(s) responsible for the data.
  • Version: The version of the dataset if there is more than one.
  • Publisher: Where or by whom the data was published, for example the name of the repository or journal.
  • Digital Object Identifier (DOI): The DOI may be a alphanumeric label or URL that is permanently associated with the data and provides access to the dataset.
  • Date accessed: When the data was accessed or downloaded for use.

What to do next:​

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