Since Derek de Solla Price presented his postulates on the growth of scientific knowledge and the shift from little science to big science (Price, 1963), there have been many attempts at theoretically and empirically describing the social dynamics surrounding the development of scientific breakthroughs, and the related policies directed at creating the right environment for these outcomes. The increasing complexity and demands of modern science require the formation of large and often complex teams of researchers working together towards shared goals (Adams et al., 2005). In some cases, these cooperative efforts are driven by large funding schemes from national and international funding agencies (Bloch & Sorensen, 2015) often including expectations for bridging disciplinary, institutional, jurisdictional, and sectoral boundaries (NRC Science of Team Science, 2015). Yet, in the complex landscape of team science, where interdisciplinary and integrative knowledge production is expected, the dynamics of knowledge generation and the factors driving team “success” remain unclear. We focus on how teams organize tasks specific to the conduct and production of research.

We base our work on Whitley’s (2000) theoretical framework, which offers a valuable perspective on the social and intellectual organization of scientific teams, particularly mutual dependence and task uncertainty, both of which focus on the dynamics and variation in team-based scientific work. First, Whitley argues that scientific fields rely on each other in two distinct ways: functionally, through the transfer of instruments, methods, or research capabilities to advance their own goals, and strategically, through dependence on peer recognition, validation, and the establishment of credibility within the scientific community. Second, variations in the extent to which certain research tasks (procedures, problem definitions, and theoretical goals) are shared across a scientific team determines the level of task uncertainty. Together, these dimensions of mutual dependence and task uncertainty are central to understanding how teams form, collaborate, and produce scientific knowledge. Our study elaborates on this framework to examine how team composition and team task distribution inform collaborative types, and how those types in turn relate to team outputs. Specifically, we ask: how does team task distribution vary by team size and across disciplinary domains?

Data and Preliminary Findings: We analyze a set of almost 700,000 publications using the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) based on a set of Elsevier and PLOS journals to study the organization of the sciences across fields (González-Salmón et al., 2024). CRediT is increasingly being used by journals to catalog author contributions. Co-authors indicate their specific contribution out of 14 possible roles. Our results convey a novel typology of team configurations using newly available bibliometric data. We combine information on team composition and contributions to identify patterns in the distribution of tasks with attributes of team members. We then identify clusters of tasks and how they vary across disciplines. Our initial results suggest that there are four main contribution types, and that differences may be observed by discipline and team size, as well as their intersection.