Complex health problems such as chronic disease or pandemics require knowledge that transcends disciplinary boundaries to generate solutions. Such transdisciplinary discovery requires researchers to work and collaborate across boundaries, combining elements of basic and applied science. At the same time, calls for more interdisciplinary health science acknowledge that there are few metrics to evaluate the products associated with these new ways of working. The Research on Academic Research (RoAR) initiative was established to evaluate the process of discovery and impact of collaboration that emerged through the Life Sciences Institute (LSI) at the University of British Columbia, a state-of-the-art facility designed to support researchers—self-organized around specific health problems rather than disciplines. A logic model depicting the factors influencing such collaboration is presented along with a multimethod evaluation plan to assist understanding of the discovery process in this new environment and develop new metrics for assessing collaborative impact.
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