Excellent question! Every collaboration is different. In our collaboration, we have bi-weekly meetings in which we bring up any issues that we are having. While we aren't all physically in a single location, we talk and present over the internet using conferencing software. At each meeting, a different sub-group presents. During these presentations, other group members will ask questions and offer suggestions for improving work and making heads or tails of confusing data. In our research group, too, we have weekly group meetings where we talk about what is going on in the lab and group members also present both on things that they are working on and things that might be interesting to the group (such as new or relevant research reports). For some collaborations, researchers will travel to physically meet with each other and discuss research. This is how many collaborations are born.
An important part of being a researcher is presenting work at conferences. At conferences, people come in often from all over the world to talk about their work and learn about what other researchers are doing.
How do you all communicate? Are there ever times when there isn't one language that is common to everybody?
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, English is generally used as a common language. However, one somewhat commonly comes across research papers in languages that one does not understand and differing languages/cultures have challenged many a collaboration. For example, there were many great papers published in Soviet journals before the end of the Cold War that have not been able to be widely read by the rest of the world due to language differences. Usually, it is possible to find someone to act as an intermediary, translating papers or interpreting between people. Google Translate can be extremely useful! In my research group, there are students from different parts of the world (China, India, USA, etc. and we have had students from other areas, as well). In the university environment, you can generally get things translated by either the library or the languages department. In face-to-face interactions, often, you can get by with an odd sort of pantomime. Many science terms are common or at least similar across languages to facilitate collaborations.
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