3.2. Fostering effective collaboration between experts
Creating a research framework that encourages collaboration between ECRs will bridge the gap between increasingly specialized sub-disciplines. Increased collaboration will better allow ECRs in Canadian Hydrology to tackle important interdisciplinary research questions, while still developing the expertise needed to advance in our own discipline and increase the quality of interdisciplinary projects. Ideally, this would begin as graduate students, learning to foster and establish collaborations to maximize scientific learning and progress. To ensure development of this important skill, departments could incorporate collaboration as part of program requirements or offer incentives for ECR-led collaborative research projects. This would also better prepare ECRs for later in their career, where collaboration and teamwork are necessary for a successful research program. Furthermore, isolation during graduate studies can have a serious negative impact on the mental health of graduate students. This can be partly alleviated by encouraging collaboration and exchange between peers (Levecque et al, 2017; Barreira et al., 2018; Evans et al., 2018).
Considering that ECRs typically do not have an established research network outside of their lab group, there is also a need for increased opportunities for engagement between ECRs. This can be addressed by organizing more discussion-based and practical workshops through ECR networks, which can play an important role in developing a collaboration network and a research community to foster scientific exchange (Langendijk et al., 2019). A culture of collaboration must begin with individual research groups, and increased exchange and communication within a research group has the added benefit of improving continuity to achieve the data management goals outlined in the previous section.