Interdisciplinarity revisited: evidence for research impact and dynamism

Abstract

Addressing many of the world's contemporary challenges requires a multifaceted and integrated approach, and interdisciplinary research (IDR) has become increasingly central to both academic interest and government science policies. Although higher interdisciplinarity is then often assumed to be associated with higher research impact, there has been little solid scientific evidence supporting this assumption. Here, we provide verifiable evidence that interdisciplinarity is statistically significantly and positively associated with research impact by focusing on highly cited paper clusters known as the research fronts (RFs). Interdisciplinarity is uniquely operationalised as the effective number of distinct disciplines involved in the RF, computed from the relative abundance of disciplines and the affinity between disciplines, where all natural sciences are classified into eight disciplines. The result of a multiple regression analysis (n = 2,560) showed that an increase by one in the effective number of disciplines was associated with an approximately 20% increase in the research impact, which was defined as a field-normalised citation-based measure. A new visualisation technique was then applied to identify the research areas in which high-impact IDR is underway and to investigate its evolution over time and across disciplines. Collectively, this work establishes a new framework for understanding the nature and dynamism of IDR in relation to existing disciplines and its relevance to science policymaking.

A large-scale validation of the relationship between cross-disciplinary research and its uptake in policy-related documents, using the novel Overton altmetrics database

“…Of the assumptions that underpin the research presented here, perhaps the most fragile is the one that policy interventions can foster increased interdisciplinarity in the research groups they target. For instance, many studies documented trends towards increased interdisciplinarity in research, but without specifically linking this shift to policy interventions (Dworkin, Shinohara, & Bassett, 2019;Okamura, 2019;Porter & Rafols, 2009); or, as we just did above, they note the multiplication of interdisciplinarity initiatives and narratives originating from policymakers. If proved effective, these initiatives could be very important in fostering cross-disciplinary research as there is quantitative evidence demonstrating that traditional grant mechanisms tend to be conservative and to shy away from cross-disciplinarity.…”

Evaluating gender equality effects in research and innovation systems

“…In the field of science, this often leads to the fact that women tend to publish in new and emerging fields of science, not yet dominated by male colleagues. Those new fields are often interdisciplinary in nature and typically associated with higher shares of citations (Okamura 2019, Wang et al 2015. From a business perspective, the presence of diversity balances biases, which thereby contributes to the generation of alternative perspectives and experiences for exploring new problems.…”

Looking for Commensality: On Culture, Health, Heritage, and the Mediterranean Diet

“…Following this, we observed that commensality should have a role in health promotion as an interesting concept and object of research in nutrition [ 8 , 9 ]. Interdisciplinarity should play an essential role [ 28 ], and cultural and nutritional aspects are fundamental parts of this comprehensive Mediterranean model or lifestyle [ 29 ]. This statement is not new and corresponds to an old claim on the part of food anthropologists [ 30 ] 3/5/2021 4:37:00 PMand other social scientists.…”