Research Focus
We study antecedents, processes, effects and boundary conditions of openness and collaboration in scientific research.
Our research focuses on investigating the role and value of openness and collaboration in scientific research and science-based innovation. More specifically, we aim at exploring whether, and if so, how and under which conditions, different forms and degrees of openness and inter/transdisciplinary collaboration influence the productivity and impact of scientific research.
Our research program is structured along the lines of the Open Innovation in Science (OIS) Research Framework (Beck et al. 2021, 2022) and revolves around four main research areas:
- Involving crowds and crowdsourcing in science
- Organizational design for openness and collaboration in science
- Micro-foundations of openness and collaboration in science
- Effects and impact of openness and collaboration in science
We develop and implement our research in collaboration with leading international research partners from different disciplines, and actively engage in contributing to the scientific debate on the role and value of openness and collaboration in science as well as to related policy debates and implementation initiatives.
Our annual OIS Research Conference brings together scholars from across disciplines who are interested in investigating and discussing the role and value of openness and collaboration in science. In addition to inspirational paper sessions, we also “walk the talk” by experimenting with novel ways to do our own research. In the past, we have co-conceptualized the OIS field from scratch (Beck et al., 2022) and co-developed research proposals with “users” of our research (Beck, Bercovitz et al., 2021).
Hila Lifshitz-Assaf
Professor, Warwick Business School and visiting faculty at the Lab for Innovation Science at Harvard University
During the pandemic, we have all experienced how scientific production and innovation are hard to do – particularly when we have the urgent need to do it in an open and collaborative way. So, there are all the reasons in the world to study it and try to improve it.
Henry Sauermann
Professor, European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) Berlin
Scientific work is often characterized by secrecy and competition between teams. If scientists learn how to leverage openness and collaboration, we can make significant progress towards more inclusive and more efficient knowledge production.