Empowered through our diversity: How to bring in a new age of plant science collaboration

Societal Impact StatementClimate-change and land-use intensification are degrading ecosystems globally, impeding their services to humans (e.g., food security and human health). The United Nations 13th and 15th Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) call for action to protect and restore ecosystems. Only transdisciplinary research can unravel the multitudes of interacting ecosystem parts that could help accomplish these SDGs. However, a major challenge will be overcoming material, social and other types of barriers that prevent collaborations. This study explores some of these challenges and seeks the views of the community through a survey to help develop a new age of plant science collaboration. In this opinion article, we explore the problem of missed opportunities for collaboration in fields related to plant science. Lack of awareness of the scientific output, which can be gained from transdisciplinary collaborations, as well as the opportunities they can provide for early-career scientists, may contribute to this. Here, we name communication barriers as particularly inhibitory to the formation of collaborations and propose possible solutions to overcome these barriers. Eventual action towards these solutions needs to be based on the opinions of the community. We thus intend this article to initiate a dialogue among researchers across the many disciplines of plant science about the feasibility of these proposed solutions. The questionnaire included with this article, intended for the broad plant research community, we believe could help us gain the necessary information to proceed in addressing communication barriers to transdisciplinary science collaborations. We provide a theoretical framework, examples and timely topics as discussion points to inspire participants of the questionnaire to contribute their voice to shaping a new age of plant science collaboration.

Automated summary

Climate change and land-use intensification are negatively impacting ecosystems, affecting their services to humans. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals call for action to protect and restore ecosystems, which requires transdisciplinary research to understand complex interactions. This study examines barriers to collaboration in plant science and proposes solutions to overcome communication barriers.