A panel of journalists at Logan Symposium  by Berkley Graduate School of Journalism  discusses the benefits of collaboration in investigative journalism. They discuss their experiences collaborating with other news organizations, and explore what makes a partnership work, and what can potentially kill a working relationship.

Deb Lavoy,  a product strategist writes that there are 3 types of collaborations and they do not mean the same thing. According to her, "collaboration refers to a cluster of 3 types of activities – they are often interdependent and linked, but they are distinct in what they can achieve, and what is required to enable them".

1 Creative Collaboration.

2. Connective Collaboration – its not the wisdom of crowds, its the aggregated wisdom of individuals.

3. Compounding Collaboration – Standing on the shoulders of giants.

She throws light on this subject through intelligence community, semantic analysis, knowledge management and other others aspects of community.

Understanding information sharing is also crucial to collaboration and specially the online collaboration. Though not directly related, the following suggests a relation. In 2002, a study conducted by Sanna Talja -"Information sharing in academic communities: Types and levels of collaboration in information seeking and use" (pdf), suggest types and levels of ‘information sharing’ in relation to document retrieval in academic communities.The finding does the following classification of information sharing:

1. Strategic sharing: information sharing as a conscious strategy of maximizing efficiency in a research group.

2. Paradigmatic sharing: information sharing as a means of establishing a novel and distinguishable research approach or area within a discipline or across disciplines.

3. Directive sharing: information sharing between teachers and students.

4. Social sharing: information sharing as a relationship- and community-building activity