nature | At least half a dozen major initiatives to study the mammalian brain
have sprung up across the world in the past five years. This wave of
national and international projects has arisen in part from the
realization that deciphering the principles of brain function will
require collaboration on a grand scale.
Yet it is unclear whether any of these mega-projects, which include
scientists from many subdisciplines, will be effective. Researchers with
complementary skill sets often team up on grant proposals. But once
funds are awarded, the labs involved often return to work on their parts
of the project in relative isolation.
We
propose an alternative strategy: grass-roots collaborations involving
researchers who may be distributed around the globe, but who are already
working on the same problems. Such self-motivated groups could start
small and expand gradually over time. But they would essentially be
built from the ground up, with those involved encouraged to follow their
own shared interests rather than responding to the strictures of
funding sources or external directives.
This
may seem obvious, but such collaboration is stymied by technical and
sociological barriers. And the conventional strategies — constructing
collaborations top-down or using funding strings to incentivize them —
do not overcome those barriers.
