Interdisciplinary research: A philosophy, art form, artifact or antidote?

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research has many faces--a philosophy, an art form, an artifact, and an antidote. It is all of these things because interdisciplinary research attempts to ask questions in ways that cut across disciplinary boundaries. This is not politically correct and universities especially find it difficult to manage interdisciplinarians and their projects. The author argues that interdisciplinary research has persisted as an alternative when traditional research approaches have failed to come up with answers to common problems. Interdisciplinary research will continue to survive as long as there are creative, risk-taking scientists who are dissatisfied with the political and organizational boundaries we establish around disciplines which limit our ability to learn about their commonalities.

HESS Opinions "Integration of groundwater and surface water research: an interdisciplinary problem?"

“…Marzano et al (2006) and Bell et al (2005) show that the majority of researchers are not particularly excited about this side of interdisciplinarity. In particular, researchers in the early career stages are discouraged by the disadvantageous time-consuming publication record, limiting aspects of interdisciplinary research (Bruhn, 2000).…”

Developing professional researchers: research students’ graduate attributes

“…They are seeking graduates who are able to apply their disciplinary-based research expertise flexibly to other contexts and problems (Holdaway, 1996;Cryer, 1998;Pearson & Brew, 2002;Usher, 2002;Borthwick & Wissler, 2003). Increasingly, employers are also seeking graduates who can understand and apply a range of international and interdisciplinary perspectives (Klein, 1996;Gibbons, 1998;Barnett, 2000;Bruhn, 2000;Somerville & Rapport, 2000;Brainard, 2002;Evans, 2002;Usher, 2002).…”

Conducting inter-disciplinary research for enhancing internetware properties

“…Accordingly, inter-disciplinary study is a paradigm of research, in which teams from different academic disciplines work closely together to enhance the basic study {Oughton, 2009 #196} [21][22][23]. All researchers in one inter-disciplinary research will participate in all phases, like determining problems and methodology, collecting and analysing data [24,25].…”