A: Establishing roles and relationships early on is essential in any collaboration. It's important to determine who will play what role and how those roles might change during the course of the project. You need to discuss and agree on, if possible, the functional as well as the interpersonal issues. The questions below will serve to get you started:

What are the goals of this project?
This may sound like an obvious question, but it's not always easy to get a consensus. Once you have agreed on the purpose, you can start thinking about roles.

How will responsibilities be assigned?
Who will be responsible for managing work loads?
How will the roles within the team change over the life of the project?

Data management:
Who is responsible for data collection, data entry, storage, and analysis?
Who is responsible for maintaining the fidelity of data collection across sites?
When and how will we share data?

Change during study:
How will changes in design be made, and who makes the decisions?
How will we keep each other accountable to timelines, quality, etc., while being flexible and reasonable?

Writing and publication decisions:
Who will write the reports and keep in contact with the project officer?
Who will be responsible for drafting the publications?
Where will we publish? (especially for multidisciplinary teams)
Who will be responsible for presentations?
How will we identify and rank contributing authors?
Who will speak to the media?
How will we decide on intellectual property rights?

Communication:
How can we maintain effective communication across members and over time?
How often will we meet in person? Where will we meet?
Will we conduct conference calls or videoconferencing?
Will we share problems or difficulties that arise, such as change in personnel or problems in protocol or recruitment?

Differences among members:
How will we deal with differences in resources and administrative support among us?
What kind of cultural differences can we anticipate, and how will we handle them?

And finally, consider the answers to these last questions:
When and how will the collaboration end?
How do we maintain/support our curiosity and our passion for the project over time?

Discussing these issues in the early stages of building a collaboration can help you avoid complications and even dissolution of the team later on. Also, establishing and maintaining effective communication throughout the project enhances the team's ability to contend with the unanticipated situations that arise in any project.

Finally, throughout any collaboration, keep in mind that "collaborating with" does not mean "working for." In a collaboration, each partner has something unique to contribute and essential for a successful outcome. For a collaboration to work, collaborators must be able to work together.