On collaborations (AI, Law, and Otter Things #29)
Hello, readers! Today's issue deals mostly with my experiences in collaborating with other researchers, followed by recommendations and otter pictures.
Speaking about work as an early career researcher can be awkward. On the one hand, you have no real grounds to dispense much advice, as the tangible outputs that would allow the evaluation of your working methods are still forthcoming (hopefully). On the other hand, tips from more established scholars are only helpful to a certain extent: there is only a limited window of time in which one has enough expertise to offer grounded advice while still being close enough to the PhD experience to speak from up-to-date first-hand experience.[i] It takes a lot of trial and error to understand what practices are helpful during a PhD in the early 2020s and what practices might be more helpful at a later stage of one’s career.[ii]
One thing that has helped me a lot in that regard is collaborating with other scholars. Writing with experts on topics such as taxation, public administration, and the justice system allowed me to learn more about research in areas beyond my focus on data protection and ICT law. Furthermore, collaboration has helped me find my own voice as a legal scholar. Seeing how my peers—and more senior colleagues—organize their work and deal with the challenges of the writing process showed me various things: that other people also struggle with some of the things that trouble me, how people I admire deal with their struggles, and what works (and does not work) in my workflow. This is not to say that collaboration always proceeds smoothly or even that it reduces the effort involved in producing good scholarship.[iii] But writing with other people—especially those from outside your institutional circles—can be a rewarding experience.
But what makes a good collaboration? A few days ago, Sofia Ranchordás raised a similar question on Twitter and got some interesting replies. At the most immediate level, good academic collaboration seems to require some mutual esteem between the parties. This does not necessarily mean friendship,[iv] but at least enough affinity to deal with the friction that is likely to happen throughout the process. Another essential item is clear communication to ensure a good flow of ideas on the research itself and a clear definition of expectations regarding the project, division of labour, deadlines, and so on. Clarity becomes particularly important when there are asymmetries of power between collaborators, as misunderstandings can happen even if there is already a good rapport between the junior and senior partners in a project.
Another aspect I want to highlight is that it is a good idea to work with people that match your communication and work styles. For example, I am quite fond of communicating through asynchronous media; using citation management tools such as Zotero;[v] and writing texts from a clear structure after an initial brainstorming phase. Not all of my collaborations so far—not even all of those I took a leading role in—followed this pattern, but it is important to know what is essential for your working style and what compromises are acceptable for you.
Understanding your redlines is also an important thing regarding the substance of the text itself. As the project progresses, you and your collaborators will likely converge on your understanding of the key issues under discussion. Nevertheless, some divergence is likely to remain, and pushing for full agreement might be counterproductive after a certain point. Therefore, a productive collaboration requires you to understand which disagreements are crucial and worth prolonging the writing process until arriving at a satisfactory conclusion and which ones are pure bikeshedding. And in some cases, it requires dealing with the middle ground: disagreements—even of a foundational nature—over topics that are important in general but not necessarily important for the argument you are developing there. In those cases, I would venture that intellectual integrity requires finding a compromise position you can live with, but a compromise might nevertheless be reasonable.
Of course, what I said above generalizes from my limited experience, and it seems likely that I will come back to this text in the future and laugh at my overall naïveté. But, right now, I would suggest my doctoral colleagues give collaboration a chance. With the right structures and people, joint authorship can be a good way to broaden your horizons and make new friends. And, if it works, the result will give the world some outputs from a perspective that goes beyond what each author has to offer. I don’t know about you, but this definitely sounds fun to me.
[i] There are established scholars who do excellent work in presenting us newcomers with sound and applicable advice. My go-to reference in this sense is Raul Pacheco-Vega and, to a lesser extent, various Twitter users from legal academia.
[ii] Of course, another complicating factor is that what works for you might not work for me, and vice-versa.
[iii] In my experience, joint-authored work has been more demanding than single-authored work. Partly because groups can tackle projects that would not be feasible for individual scholars, but also because even the smoothest forms of communication between collaborators involve some overhead. In addition, the exchange of ideas in a good collaboration creates a fertile environment for new ideas, some of them unrelated to the project at hand, and prioritizing things can itself demand some additional effort.
[iv] Some good friendships of mine came from joint work, but I would not dare to work with some of my favourite friends in legal academia.
[v] But not LaTeX. Don’t get me started about LaTeX.
Recommendations
Today's issue was largely a ruse to use this FFS song in a newsletter:
(But, to be fair, it mostly does not align with my collaborative experiences!)
Now that I got it out of my system, today's first recommendation is not a reading recommendation but rather a link for an open call for papers. Gikii, the geek law conference, has just released its call for papers. This year’s conference will be held on 6 and 7 July 2022 in a hybrid format, with the in-person component in Reykjavik, Iceland. Sounds like an amazing opportunity!
Speaking of amazing opportunities, Digi-Con has three open calls for blogposts. The first one is our general call for blog posts: we accept posts ranging from 1,000 to 2,000 words in any aspect of digital constitutionalism. The second call for posts welcomes contributions about the digital dimensions of the Ukraine war. Finally, we are also welcoming posts to the Sci-Fi section: essays about science fiction, short stories, and works of art in general. Check our submission guidelines and send your blog post to digitalconstitutionalism@gmail.com.
As for reading recommendations, today I would like to suggest:
Lilian Edwards, ‘Regulating AI in Europe: Four Problems and Four Solutions’ (Ada Lovelace Institute 2022).
Maraísa Rosa Cezarino and Camila Leite Contri, 'As implicações da construção binária do gênero para a realização de decisões automatizadas que impactem diretamente as pessoas trans e não-binárias', in Bia Barbosa, Laura Tresca and Tanara Lauschner (eds.), TIC, Governança da Internet e Gênero: Tendências e Desafios (CGI.br 2022).
Giovanni De Gregorio and Pietro Dunn, ‘The European Risk-Based Approaches: Connecting Constitutional Dots in the Digital Age’ (2022) 59 Common Market Law Review 473.
Ryan Calo, ‘The Scale and the Reactor’ (SSRN 2022)
Christina Eckes, ‘A Timid Defence of Legal Formalism’ in Marija Bartl and Jessica C Lawrence (eds), The Politics of European Legal Research (Edward Elgar 2022).