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Promoting and Supporting Innovation Through Collaborative Research
Author(s) -
Gentile Jim
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.26.1_supplement.617.1
Subject(s) - promotion (chess) , public relations , expansive , quality (philosophy) , political science , work (physics) , business , engineering , mechanical engineering , philosophy , compressive strength , materials science , epistemology , politics , law , composite material
Many of the major scientific challenges of the 21st century are likely to require collaborative and interdisciplinary teams. Creating good “team players” who can work synergistically to undertake high‐risk, high‐reward research should be a priority, and demonstrating success in collaborations should be encouraged by private and federal granting agencies, and more highly rewarded by universities in tenure and promotion decisions. Given the challenges that our nation faces, tenure and promotion decisions should no longer be based merely on the number of papers published or overhead dollars generated. Journal editorial boards and foundation peer‐review panels are essential to the highest‐quality science, but they should not be viewed as surrogate members of tenure and promotion committees. Rewarding careers paths should be clearly visible to the nation's newly minted science Ph.D.s, postdoctoral researchers and “tenure track” professors. Allowing these early‐career scientists more expansive opportunities during their most creative years would make the United States, and the academic communities in which they serve, an increasingly more vibrant and creative environments. The heart and soul of American science and enterprise is the willingness to take risks, to learn from failure and to repeat the process until success is achieved. Our early‐career scientists should have the same opportunity.