Integrating community expertise into scientific teams and research endeavors can holistically address complex health challenges and grand societal problems. An in-depth understanding of the integration of team science and community engagement principles is needed. The purpose of this scoping review was to identify how and where team science and community engagement approaches are being used simultaneously in research.

We followed Levac’s enhancement of Arksey and O’Malley’s Scoping Review Framework and systematically searched PubMed, CINAHL, Scopus, ERIC, and Embase for team science and community engagement terms through January 2024.

Sixty-seven articles were reviewed. Publications describing integrated team science and community-engaged research have increased exponentially since 2004. Over half were conducted outside of the U.S., utilized qualitative methods, included community-researcher co-development of research question and study design, and described team partnership goals, roles, and management. Fewer studies evaluated partnership, built community capacity, described financial compensation to communities, or described team dynamics facilitation.

As researchers continue to integrate community engagement and team science, common criteria and strategies for integrating the approaches are needed. We provide 19 recommendations for research teams, research institutions, journals, and funding bodies in service of advancing the science and practice of this integration.

The New Jersey Kids Study (NJKS) is a transdisciplinary statewide initiative to understand influences on child health, development, and disease. We conducted a mixed-methods study of project planning teams to investigate team effectiveness and relationships between team dynamics and quality of deliverables.

Ten theme-based working groups (WGs) (e.g., Neurodevelopment, Nutrition) informed protocol development and submitted final reports. WG members (n = 79, 75%) completed questionnaires including de-identified demographic and professional information and a modified TeamSTEPPS Team Assessment Questionnaire (TAQ). Reviewers independently evaluated final reports using a standardized tool. We analyzed questionnaire results and final report assessments using linear regression and performed constant comparative qualitative analysis to identify central themes.

WG-level factors associated with greater team effectiveness included proportion of full professors (β = 31.24, 95% CI 27.65–34.82), team size (β = 0.81, 95% CI 0.70–0.92), and percent dedicated research effort (β = 0.11, 95% CI 0.09–0.13); age distribution (β = −2.67, 95% CI –3.00 to –2.38) and diversity of school affiliations (β = –33.32, 95% CI –36.84 to –29.80) were inversely associated with team effectiveness. No factors were associated with final report assessments. Perceptions of overall initiative leadership were associated with expressed enthusiasm for future NJKS participation. Qualitative analyses of final reports yielded four themes related to team science practices: organization and process, collaboration, task delegation, and decision-making patterns.

We identified several correlates of team effectiveness in a team science initiative's early planning phase. Extra effort may be needed to bridge differences in team members' backgrounds to enhance the effectiveness of diverse teams. This work also highlights leadership as an important component in future investigator engagement.

Translational science (TS) teams develop and conduct translational research. Academic TS teams can be categorized under three constituency groups: trainees and faculty, clinical research professionals (CRP), and community partners. Our study objectives were to define individual and team competencies of these three constituency groups during their career life course and determine relative importance and the level of mastery of each of the competencies needed at different stages of their life course.

Each group was composed of experts for their constituency group. We applied individual and team competencies in TS teams by Lotrecchiano et al. (2020) as a starting point for structured expert discussions following a modified Delphi approach that we adapted based on the emergent needs and insights per constituency group.

The degree of relevance and level of mastery for individual and team competencies varies for trainees and faculty members across the career life course based on opportunities provided and relative importance at that career stage. However, CRPs enter TS teams at various career stages with fundamental, skilled, or advanced levels of smart skills that may or may not be contextual to their role. Community partners equally possess and develop competencies in a non-linear and contextual fashion that are required to facilitate constructive, bi-directional collaboration with other members of TS teams.

Team science competencies across the career life course do not develop linearly among different constituency groups and require an adaptive framework to enhance TS team effectiveness.

Traditionally, research institutions have valued individual achievements such as principal investigator and lead authorship status as primary indicators in the academic promotions process. However, the scientific process increasingly requires collaboration by teams of researchers across multiple disciplines, sometimes including experts outside academia, often referred to as “team science.” We sought to determine whether there is agreement about what constitutes team science at our academic institution and whether current promotion processes sufficiently incentivize faculty participation in team science.

We conducted 20 qualitative interviews with academic leaders (N = 24) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) who supervise faculty promotions processes. Participants were asked to share their definitions of team science and the extent to which faculty receive credit for engaging in these activities during the promotions process. A subset of participants also completed a brief survey in which they ranked the importance of participation in team science relative to other factors that are traditionally valued in the promotions process. Interview data were examined by two analysts using structural coding. Descriptive analyses were conducted of survey responses.

Though team science is valued at UCSF, definitions of team science and the approach to assigning credit for team science in academic promotions processes varied widely. Participants suggested opportunities to bolster support for team science.

Efforts to define and provide transparent faculty incentives for team science should be prioritized at institutions, like UCSF, seeking to advance faculty engagement in collaborative research.

Despite the central importance of cross-disciplinary collaboration in the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) network and the implementation of various programs designed to enhance collaboration, rigorous evidence for the efficacy of these approaches is lacking. We conducted a novel randomized controlled trial (RCT; ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT05395286) of a promising approach to enhance collaboration readiness and behavior among 95 early career scholars from throughout the CTSA network.

Participants were randomly assigned (within two cohorts) to participate in an Innovation Lab, a week-long immersive collaboration experience, or to a treatment-as-usual control group. Primary outcomes were change in metrics of self-reported collaboration readiness (through 12-month follow-up) and objective collaboration network size from bibliometrics (through 21 months); secondary outcomes included self-reported number of grants submitted and, among Innovation Lab participants only, reactions to the Lab experience (through 12 months).

Short-term reactions from Innovation Lab participants were quite positive, and controlled evidence for a beneficial impact of Innovation Labs over the control condition was observed in the self-reported number of grant proposals in the intent-to-treat sample. Primary measures of collaboration readiness were near ceiling in both groups, limiting the ability to detect enhancement. Collaboration network size increased over time to a comparable degree in both groups.

The findings highlight the need for systematic intervention development research to identify efficacious strategies that can be implemented throughout the CTSA network to better support the goal of enhanced cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Despite the critical role that quantitative scientists play in biomedical research, graduate programs in quantitative fields often focus on technical and methodological skills, not on collaborative and leadership skills. In this study, we evaluate the importance of team science skills among collaborative biostatisticians for the purpose of identifying training opportunities to build a skilled workforce of quantitative team scientists.

Our workgroup described 16 essential skills for collaborative biostatisticians. Collaborative biostatisticians were surveyed to assess the relative importance of these skills in their current work. The importance of each skill is summarized overall and compared across career stages, highest degrees earned, and job sectors.

Survey respondents were 343 collaborative biostatisticians spanning career stages (early: 24.2%, mid: 33.8%, late: 42.0%) and job sectors (academia: 69.4%, industry: 22.2%, government: 4.4%, self-employed: 4.1%). All 16 skills were rated as at least somewhat important by > 89.0% of respondents. Significant heterogeneity in importance by career stage and by highest degree earned was identified for several skills. Two skills (“regulatory requirements” and “databases, data sources, and data collection tools”) were more likely to be rated as absolutely essential by those working in industry (36.5%, 65.8%, respectively) than by those in academia (19.6%, 51.3%, respectively). Three additional skills were identified as important by survey respondents, for a total of 19 collaborative skills.

We identified 19 team science skills that are important to the work of collaborative biostatisticians, laying the groundwork for enhancing graduate programs and establishing effective on-the-job training initiatives to meet workforce needs.

A recent literature review revealed no studies that explored teams that used an explicit theoretical framework for multiteam systems in academic settings, such as the increasingly important multi-institutional cross-disciplinary translational team (MCTT) form. We conducted an exploratory 30-interview grounded theory study over two rounds to analyze participants’ experiences from three universities who assembled an MCTT in order to pursue a complex grant proposal related to research on post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, also called “long COVID.” This article considers activities beginning with preliminary discussions among principal investigators through grant writing and submission, and completion of reviews by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which resulted in the proposal not being scored.

There were two stages to this interview study with MCTT members: pre-submission, and post-decision. Round one focused on the process of developing structures to collaborate on proposal writing and assembly, whereas round two focused on evaluation of the complete process. A total of 15 participants agreed to be interviewed in each round.

The first round of interviews was conducted prior to submission and explored issues during proposal writing, including (1) importance of the topic; (2) meaning and perception of “team” within the MCTT context; and (3) leadership at different levels of the team. The second round explored best practices-related issues including (1) leadership and design; (2) specific proposal assembly tasks; (3) communication; and (4) critical events.

We conclude with suggestions for developing best practices for assembling MCTTs involving multi-institutional teams.

Large, transdisciplinary research consortia have increasingly been called upon to address complex and challenging health problems. The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program developed multisite collaboration strategies to promote impactful collaborative observational research on child health. Team science and implementation science offer theoretical and methodological structure to answer questions about the strategies that facilitate successful consortia. We sought to characterize the elements and conditions that influence the implementation of a complex, interdisciplinary longitudinal research program, ECHO.

Informed by the Practical, Robust, Implementation and Sustainability Model, our ethnographic research included semi-structured interviews with internal stakeholders and program evaluation metrics. We conducted template and matrix analysis and triangulated the qualitative and quantitative data to understand the implementation of ECHO.

Between February and May 2022, we conducted 24 virtual interviews with representatives from ECHO components. The main cross-cutting topics that emerged from thematic analysis were collaboration and team science; communication and decision-making; data processes and harmonization; and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Both the qualitative and secondary quantitative evaluation data provided insights into the reach, adoption, implementation, and effectiveness of the program.

A large, multidisciplinary research consortium such as ECHO has produced conceptual, instrumental, capacity building, and connectivity impact for internal and external stakeholders. Facilitators included infrastructure that supported collaboration and learning, alignment of data processes, and harmonization. Opportunities for enhanced impact include multidisciplinary, multimethod communication strategies, and alignment of research priorities.

Clinical and Translational Research (CTR) requires a team-based approach, with successful teams engaging in skilled management and use of information. Yet we know little about the ways that Translational Teams (TTs) engage with information across the lifecycle of CTR projects. This qualitative study explored the challenges that information management imposes on the conduct of team-based CTR.

We conducted interviews with ten members of TTs at University of Wisconsin. Interviews were transcribed and thematic analysis was conducted.

TTs’ piecemeal and reactive approaches to information management created conflict within the team and slowed scientific progress. The lack of cohesive information management strategies made it more difficult for teams to develop strong team processes like communication, scientific coordination, and project management. While TTs’ research was hindered by the institutional challenges of interdisciplinary team information sharing, TTs who had developed shared approaches to information management that foregrounded transparency, accountability, and trust, described substantial benefits to their teamwork.

We propose a new model for the Science of Team Science field – a Translational Team Science Hierarchy of Needs – that suggests interventions should be targeted at the appropriate stage of team development in order to maximize a team’s scientific potential.

Research participation during undergraduate years has a powerful influence on career selection and attitudes toward scientific research. Most undergraduate research programs in academic health centers are oriented toward basic research or address a particular disease focus or research discipline. Undergraduate research programs that expose students to clinical and translational research may alter student perceptions about research and influence career selection.

We developed an undergraduate summer research curriculum, anchored upon a clinical and translational research study developed to address a common unmet needs in neonatal nurseries (e.g., assessment of neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome). Program topics reflected the cross-disciplinary expertise that contributed to the development of this “bedside to bench” study, including opioid addiction, vulnerable populations, research ethics, statistics, data collection and management, assay development, analytical laboratory analysis, and pharmacokinetics. The curriculum was delivered through three offerings over 12 months, using Zoom video-conferencing due to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nine students participated in the program. Two-thirds reported the course enhanced their understanding of clinical and translational research. Over three-quarters reported the curriculum topics were very good or excellent. In open-ended questions, students reported that the cross-disciplinary nature of the curriculum was the strongest aspect of the program.

The curriculum could be readily adapted by other Clinical and Translational Science Award programs seeking to provide clinical and translational research-oriented programs to undergraduate students. Application of cross-disciplinary research approaches to a specific clinical and translational research question provides students with relevant examples of translational research and translational science.