{"title":"The ‘Research Derby’: A pressure cooker for creative and collaborative science","authors":"B. Favaro, D. Braun","doi":"10.4033/IEE.2013.6.9.N","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Ecology and evolution research benefits when scientists engage in meaningful collaborations. However, making time for such efforts is difficult, particularly for early-career graduate students who are often focused on an independent and self-driven research program. Here, we introduce the concept of the Research Derby, a collaborative and semi-competitive workshop where teams are given 24 hours to complete a research project. This ‘pressure-cooker’ environment is designed to give scientists a fun and short-term opportunity to conduct research outside their primary field, promote skills exchange within the research group, and ultimately produce high-quality scientific publications. In this manuscript we outline the goals of the Research Derby, explain how to set up such an event, and recount our experiences running a Derby within our research group at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada. We argue that Research Derbies have the potential to achieve creative and collaborative high-impact science, and are a fun and productive research activity.","PeriodicalId":42755,"journal":{"name":"Ideas in Ecology and Evolution","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2013-09-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Ideas in Ecology and Evolution","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.4033/IEE.2013.6.9.N","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Ecology and evolution research benefits when scientists engage in meaningful collaborations. However, making time for such efforts is difficult, particularly for early-career graduate students who are often focused on an independent and self-driven research program. Here, we introduce the concept of the Research Derby, a collaborative and semi-competitive workshop where teams are given 24 hours to complete a research project. This ‘pressure-cooker’ environment is designed to give scientists a fun and short-term opportunity to conduct research outside their primary field, promote skills exchange within the research group, and ultimately produce high-quality scientific publications. In this manuscript we outline the goals of the Research Derby, explain how to set up such an event, and recount our experiences running a Derby within our research group at Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada. We argue that Research Derbies have the potential to achieve creative and collaborative high-impact science, and are a fun and productive research activity.