nodalpoint.org

What should your three main priorities be as a Scientist? Collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. Quentin Vicens and Phil Bourne have just published Ten Simple Rules for a Successful Collaboration [1] to help you do just that, as part of a continuing series [2,3,4,5].

Tony Bliar once said “Ask me my three main priorities for government, and I tell you: education, education, education.” In Science, its not so much about education as collaboration, collaboration, collaboration. The advice in Ten Simple Rules is all useful stuff, but what caught my eye is the fact that collaboration is on the rise, at least according to the number of co-authors on papers published in PNAS. The average number of co-authors has risen from 3.9 in 1981 to 8.4 in 2001. So before you publish or perish, it seems likely that you'll also need to collaborate or commiserate... less laboratory, more collaboratory!

Photo credit Garret Keogh

References

1. Quentin Vicens and Phillip Bourne (2007) Ten Simple Rules for a Successful Collaboration PLOS Computational Biology
2. Phillip Bourne (2006) Ten Simple Rules for Getting Published PLOS Computational Biology
3. Philip Bourne and Iddo Friedberg (2006) Ten Simple Rules for Selecting a Postdoctoral Position PLOS Computational Biology
4. Phillip Bourne and Leo Chalupa (2006) Ten Simple Rules for Getting Grants PLOS Computational Biology
5. Phillip Bourne and Alon Korngreen (2006) Ten Simple Rules for Reviewers PLOS Computational Biology

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.