This response to Vassiliki Papatsiba's article on collaboration draws attention to structural barriers to collaborative research: for example, increased competition for scarce resources, increased steering of research, and the casualisation of research workers. It draws on experience of collaborative work in a large, EU-funded project to…

The article studies the replacement of bureacratic systems of command and control by networks based on technologies, where co-operation and co-ordination are constantly negotiated and regulated in different ways, and where policy-makers negotiate new power relations with new actors. The comparison between England and Scotland highlights the fact…