A problem shared

摘要

At 4 p.m. one spring Tuesday, nine graduate students at Oregon State University (OSU) in Corvallis kick their research into gear. For more than an hour, they discuss their work on fisheries along the US west coast, moving from how data on marine biodiversity hotspots change over time to how to organize tables for a paper. These students, who have been meeting frequently for nearly two years, are part of the Dimensions of Biodiversity Distributed Graduate Seminar (DBDGS), a programme that ultimately included teams at 14 institutions - nine in the United States, two in Kenya and one each in Chile, Brazil and China. Each institution's group runs at least one research project, in which students, usually working outside their main field, make intensive examinations of large, mostly pre-existing biodiversity data sets. They formulate research questions, analyse data and publish the results - sometimes in multiple papers, and usually with every student in the group as a co-author.