Larger teams are less innovative and limit their members’ career prospects, according to a wide-ranging study of US academics that claims to have broader implications for business, the military and other organisations.
The recent trend in scientific research has been to assemble increasingly large teams who jointly publish ever more journal articles. But the consequence has been that their members receive fewer research grants, are promoted more slowly, are less likely to receive tenure and are more likely to quit, the study found.
The analysis, “The rise of teamwork and career prospects in academic science”, was published this week in Nature Biotechnology, a leading peer-reviewed journal. Its findings contrast with recent pressure in academia to build larger interdisciplinary teams in order to bring in a wider variety of perspectives.