Can "collaborative" be a noun?
I'm reading an article with the heading "Building motivation to participate in a quality improvement collaborative in NHS hospital trusts in SE England: a qualitative participatory evaluation".

In this paper, it seems like they always use "collaborative" as a noun. For example, "Collaboratives maybe an important way of engaging practitioners in quality improvement initiative." and "Quality improvement collaboratives in healthcare bring together groups of health professionals,....."

Then, I'm confused what part of speech collaborative exactly is. As I look up in the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, they says that "collaborative is an adjective and is used before a noun.

Can we use "collaborative as a noun like in this paper? and if we can why isn't it said in the standard dictionaries?

Question

Can "collaborative" be a noun?
I'm reading an article with the heading "Building motivation to participate in a quality improvement collaborative in NHS hospital trusts in SE England: a qualitative participatory evaluation".

In this paper, it seems like they always use "collaborative" as a noun. For example, "Collaboratives maybe an important way of engaging practitioners in quality improvement initiative." and "Quality improvement collaboratives in healthcare bring together groups of health professionals,....."

Then, I'm confused what part of speech collaborative exactly is. As I look up in the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries, they says that "collaborative is an adjective and is used before a noun.

Can we use "collaborative as a noun like in this paper? and if we can why isn't it said in the standard dictionaries?

Answer

Business-speak is well known for lazy or pretentious uses of language like this; you have found an example from the public sector - which is just as bad as the private sector. We should feel sorry for people who have to live like this and yes, you are right, it is wrong: language is a living thing and parts of it are rotten, such as this.

Robert is right to suggest that dictionaries describe English, they don't make rules, and sometimes they are out of date. Even when this usage does get documented in dictionaries, that won't make it any the less repellent.

Answer

It can be a noun. It has been used as a noun for only a few years, so the dictionaries have not been updated. In some sense, everyone knows that it is a collaborative 'something', such as effort, network, meeting, etc., so they do not bother to say that 'something'.