Chapter 4: Barriers to Research and Scientific Collaboration at Universities

Scientific collaboration within and across disciplines is critical to research innovation and knowledge dissemination. The relationship between scientific collaboration and research productivity has been well established by the literature on team science. Analyzing the role of organizational culture on scientific collaborations using a combination of organizational surveys and semi-structured interviews can add new dimensions to this field. This chapter highlights major barriers to research and collaboration by examining how a university’s organizational culture shapes its collaboration culture. These barriers were identified using quantitative and qualitative data gathered from an online survey (n = 913) and open-ended interviews with faculty (n = 22) to estimate their prevalence and variance across colleges. This chapter uses this multi-method approach to identify seven barrier categories: (a) organizational level administrative regulations, (b) organizational culture and structures, (c) interpersonal communication issues, (d) time allocation, (e) funding restrictions, (f) disciplinary and college level divides, and (g) geographical proximity. Using this analysis of these barrier categories, this chapter also proposes suggestions for encouraging scientific collaboration at universities and addressing these barriers.