What Makes Collaborations across a Distance

Scientific collaborations are increasingly being conducted at a distance, despite the many factors that make collaboration at a distance difficult. We focus on the discipline of cognitive science because it is both young and highly interdisciplinary, thus potentially increasing both the rewards and difficulties of collaboration at a distance. Using questionnaire data from practicing cognitive scientists, we examined the impact of distance on who is likely to collaborate, the success of the collaboration, and the process of collaboration. There were few differences between those collaborating at a distance and locally. Surprisingly, collaborations at a distance were more successful than collaborations conducted locally. Distant collaborations depended crucially on frequent face-to-face contact. We conclude with a discussion of how these results change our understanding of collaboration in general and, in particular, of collaboration at a distance. 529 Modern scientific collaborations frequently are carried out by researchers who are geographically distributed, in part because necessary resources for the research are often distributed geographically, and in part because scientific collaborations continue after collaborators change academic or research institutions. In this chapter, we examine the nature and consequences of scientific collaborations that are collocated or distant. We ask whether they function differently than local collaborations. Understanding how such collaborations function might provide better insights in the nature of collaboration more generally. There are some recently developing pragmatic reasons to study the differences between local and distant collaborations. With the development of the Internet and various computerized collaboration tools, it is becoming possible to achieve some of the features of face-to-face collaboration from a great distance. These products beg the question of what features of local collaborations are particularly important to duplicate. Certainly, not all features of these collaboration tools are worth the expense, and some features may actually hurt the collaboration The goal of this chapter is to examine role of distance in the collaborative process within the domain of cognitive science. We ask if scientists working at a distance differ from those working locally, whether working across a distance changes the collaborative process, and what scientists do to make collaborations across a distance succeed and continue. To answer these questions, we present survey data collected from cognitive scientists at a recent conference. Three Distinctions among Scientific Collaborations The way that collaborations function is likely to depend upon the needs and relative skills of the collaborators. Three factors are likely to play an important role. …