Las formas colectivas de la investigación universitaria

the recognition of the collective nature of knowledge production in academic settings is already a common place. the research group is the minimum time and space unit of knowledge production of a collective character. despite the fact that research groups are often part of the description of many academic entities, at both institutional and cognitive levels, they have not become a privileged object of study in the specialized literature on science, technology and society. the difficult development of empirical approaches for the systematic study of research groups is one of the reasons that may explain its absence in the literature. this article analyzes the experience of a comprehensive recent study of university research groups. the study involved a call for the auto-identification of research groups at the universidad de la república, uruguay, based on the acknowledgment that the notion of identity plays a structuring role in the configuration of research groups. the article examines the particularities of the approach designed to identify university research groups and collect data for their characterization. in addition, it analyzes selected research results regarding the basic traits and activities of these collectives units.