Observations of the lifecycles and information worlds of collaborative scientific teams at a national science lab

Team-based scientific collaborations play a key role in the discovery and distribution of scientific knowledge. In order to determine the social and organizational factors that help support a scientific team's successful transition from short-term experiments to long-term programs of ongoing scientific research, this study used observations of teams conducting experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory to determine what teams actually do during these experiments. As part of a larger, ongoing research project using mixed methods, our findings describe the scientific culture of hybrid teams at work, and demonstrate how multiple, overlapping, and nested lifecycles and information worlds play an important role in promoting successful and continuing scientific collaboration. The boundaries between worlds and efforts to span them are particularly important, requiring greater attention. Our future research will develop a model including these factors and add further practical and theoretical implications to those we have already identified.