Majority of research publications today are co-authored. In fact, co-authorship is a common practice in academic research and is generally encouraged by the academic community.
There are several reasons why co-authorship is prevalent in research articles. First, research often requires expertise in multiple areas, and co-authors can bring complementary skills and perspectives to a project. Second, collaboration can help to increase the quality of research by promoting discussion and debate among researchers. Third, co-authorship can also help to increase the visibility and impact of research, as multiple authors can bring their own networks of colleagues and followers to the project.
In some fields, such as medicine and the sciences, co-authorship and collaborative research is particularly common. In fact, studies have found that the average number of authors per article has been steadily increasing in many scientific fields over the past several decades.1 This proves the value of collaborative research in academia.
How do researchers share scholarly work with each other as they discover it?
While working on collaborative research, researchers share relevant articles that are related to their project with each other. It’s often done on direct messaging apps (like WhatsApp, Messenger) or on email, and is quick and easy since these apps are already present on almost everyone’s smartphones.
However, there are some cases where the traditional means given above don’t work very well:–
- Multiple topics of collaboration among the same set of researchers – The personal messaging apps and emails are not designed for facilitating multiple parallel conversations among their users. It’s mostly a single running thread.
- Curating a list of references – Collecting a list of references becomes difficult as the apps are primarily designed for ‘general’ use cases.
In cases like these, a platform that lets its users share their research as they discover it would be hugely beneficial. The platform will be a common space where the first party can add more context (like notes and tags) for others and they can act on it as they collaborate together.
On this very premise, R Discovery has tried to bring something for its users.
Enabling collaborative research among researchers using shared reading lists on R Discovery
To enable collaborative research among its users, R Discovery has launched a latest feature called ‘shared reading lists’. With this feature, co-researchers will be able to view existing content as well as save new content that they find relevant on R Discovery to the same list.
To invite a collaborator, go the library and then click on the reading list for which you want to work together with a co-researcher. Tap on ‘Invite Collaborator’ and send an invite.
Once a collaborator installs the app via the invite link, he/she is automatically added to the particular reading list and can start reading right away.
To conclude, collaborative research requires merging of different fields and can make incredible breakthroughs possible. This latest feature of R Discovery is a step to make co-researchers’ life easy, so that nothing stands in the way of ground-breaking research.
Download the R Discovery app using the QR below and let us know if you like the experience. Please send in your feedback or suggestions, if any, to shashank.suri@cactusglobal.com.
References:
- Daniele Fanelli, Vincent Larivière. Researchers’ Individual Publication Rate Has Not Increased in a Century. Plos.org, 2016. Available at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0149504.
