Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of domestic science is an important task at the level of the country and individual universities. In turn, one of the key concepts in the university's scientific potential system is a scientific team that actually designates one of the structural units of science. This is due to the fact that today most of the scientific research is carried out precisely by scientific groups, and not by individual scientists, as this contributes to a wider vision of the goal and the effective solution of the tasks set. Sociological analysis of the ways and purposes of joining scientists into scientific groups, the distribution of roles and functions among members of the scientific team, as well as the analysis of the results obtained during the work of scientific groups, makes it possible to distinguish the optimal models of organizing scientific groups, which are the most successful and effective. The article, based on the results of a sociological study conducted in 2019, using the in-depth interview method, on the experience of scientists of the Ural Federal University named after the First President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin, examined the features and methods of the formation and functioning of formal and informal scientific groups. As a result, the analysis made it possible to identify the features of the association of scientists into scientific groups, the most effective ways of their communication, as well as to determine the patterns of organization of scientific groups, which are the most common. The author concludes that joint scientific work contributes to increasing the publication activity of individual scientists and the organization as a whole.