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.