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This Commentary describes recent research progress and professional developments in the study of scientific teamwork, an area of inquiry termed the “science of team science” (SciTS, pronounced “sahyts”). It proposes a systems perspective that incorporates a mixed-methods approach to SciTS that is commensurate with the conceptual, methodological, and translational complexities addressed within the SciTS field. The theoretically grounded and practically useful framework is intended to integrate existing and future lines of SciTS research to facilitate the field’s evolution as it addresses key challenges spanning macro, meso, and micro levels of analysis.

The First Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference was held in Chicago, IL April 22–24, 2010. This article presents a summary of the Conference proceedings. Clin Trans Sci 2010; Volume 3: 263–266.

Generally theorized and empirically examined as an organization phenomenon, collaboration may be more productively explored from a mesolevel model that simultaneously addresses group, organizational, and public frames. Examining how individuals communicate in those frames revealed four discursive productions of collaboration, which were previously undertheorized. Thus, we propose a communicative model that details the simultaneously occurring communication at multiple levels that gives rise to the emergence and effectiveness of collaborating talk. In this model, communication is no longer described as one of the component(s) of collaboration; communication is elevated to the essence of collaboration. Working from observations and records of a 9-month interorganizational collaboration, this article develops a mesolevel communicative model of collaboration and demonstrates that the bulk of collaborative communication occurs at the team level-indeed, the level where relationships among individuals and organizations is revealed and acted upon.The critique and conceptual analysis that follows underlie the development of a communicative model of interorganizational collaboration. The model applies to problem-centered teams that perform tasks, such as facilitating organizational mergers, addressing public policy or civic issues, and creating product or service innovations across industries. That is, individuals in the collaboration represent multiple and potentially competing organizational or constituency interests. Limiting collaboration in this way highlights conditions influencing communication that may not be present or are hidden in other forms of collaborating.Focusing on organizational representatives rather than organizations makes two advances. First, it identifies a series of constructs that influence an individual's organizational representation and, therefore, his or her communication in COMMUNICATION THEORYa collaboration process. These constructs are as follows: investment in resources, expected impact of collaborative activity, network uncertainty, and network instability. Second, the model recognizes that ''by their very nature, organizations are multilevel, [thus] no construct is level free'' (Klein, Dansereau, & Hall, 1994, p. 198).To wit, collaboration must be considered at multiple levels. One level is the face-toface communication of representatives in the collaborative group. At the team level, the model addresses both communication within and among collaborative teams. At the organizational level, it addresses communication among represented organizations and between a facilitating organization and its direct and indirect (public) stakeholders. As such, the model is situated in both micro-and macrocontexts and applies to both zero-history groups and those with a past and an expectation of a future, as the conditions of the model are primarily based on organizational membership, not on the duration or history of the team.A communication-based model of interorganizational collaboration, in our view...

An increase in cross-disciplinary, collaborative team science initiatives over the last few decades has spurred interest by multiple stakeholder groups in empirical research on scientific teams, giving rise to an emergent field referred to as the science of team science (SciTS). This study employed a collaborative team science concept-mapping evaluation methodology to develop a comprehensive research agenda for the SciTS field. Its integrative mixed-methods approach combined group process with statistical analysis to derive a conceptual framework that identifies research areas of team science and their relative importance to the emerging SciTS field. The findings from this concept-mapping project constitute a lever for moving SciTS forward at theoretical, empirical, and translational levels.