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Together we stand

Nature Physics volume 10, pages 700–702 (2014)Cite this article

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University culture stands at a critical crossroads: the era of team science is upon us functionally, but not yet structurally. Solutions to the problems this mismatch creates involve rethinking education — and giving credit where credit is due.

Over the past 70 years, scientific research has been transforming from a solitary operation into an endeavour characterized by ever-increasing team size1. The importance of this transformation cannot be overstated. As science undergoes this remarkable evolution, one might expect that the scientific community and its primary host — academia — would develop new norms that better serve its needs. But the academic career structure, originally conceived to reward self-sufficient independent researchers, continues to be implemented in a system now dominated by teams. To make matters worse, increasingly specialized education leaves academics ill-prepared to cope with this challenge. When, how and why did this problem arise, where will it lead and how can it be rectified?

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Figure 1: a, The fast disappearance of the solo author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ioannis Pavlidis is in the Computational Physiology Laboratory at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204, USA,

    Ioannis Pavlidis

  2. Alexander M. Petersen is in the Laboratory for the Analysis of Complex Economic Systems at the IMT Lucca Institute for Advanced Studies, Lucca 55100, Italy,

    Alexander M. Petersen

  3. Ioanna Semendeferi is in the Department of Physics at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas 77204, USA,

    Ioanna Semendeferi

Authors
  1. Ioannis Pavlidis
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  2. Alexander M. Petersen
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  3. Ioanna Semendeferi
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Pavlidis, I., Petersen, A. & Semendeferi, I. Together we stand. Nature Phys 10, 700–702 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3110

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