Measuring interdisciplinary collaboration within a university: The effects of the multidisciplinary research programme

Abstract

A Multidisciplinary Research Programme (MRP) is being developed since 1989 in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain, to support cross-disciplinary research projects. This paper analyses the incidence of interdisciplinarity in the UCM scientific publications over the period 1990-96 and tries to determine the success of the Programme at fostering cross-disciplinary research. Interdisciplinary in the UCM is measured through the collaboration of authors from different institutional addresses within the UCM, both in scientific publications and in research projects. Publications jointly signed by the different teams that collaborate in the projects were identified as an indicator of the success of the Programme in integrating disciplines, hrterdisciplinary collaboration within the UCM showed an upward trend over time. Publications of MRP groups showed a higher interdisciplinary collaboration rate than the rest of the UCM (17% vs.9%). Dramatic repercussions of the Programme were not expected due to its limited magnitude, but it worked as a catalyst, enhancing interdisciplinary relations within the UCM. The interest of such a programme is supported by its effects, both direct effects on granted teams and indirect on the whole UCM community.

Academic genealogy as an indicator of interdisciplinarity: An examination of dissertation networks in Library and Information Science

“…The few that exist typically use coauthorship (e.g., Schummer, 2004) and disciplinary affiliation of the author (the department in which they are employed) to denote disciplinarity (Bordons et al, 1999;Herring, 1999;Palmer, 1999;Pierce, 1999;Qin, Lancaster, & Allen, 1997;Rafols & Meyer, 2007). However, these are essentially still documentderived because the disciplinary affiliation is tied back to authors, and authors to documents, and document sets to journals.…”

“…Furthermore, we may expect that they may tacitly transfer these skills in turn to their own doctoral students. However, although multiple scholars have suggested that disciplinary backgrounds may provide an indicator of interdisciplinarity (e.g., Bordons, Zulueta, Romero, & Barrigon, 1999;Palmer, 1999), none have rigorously examined this. Furthermore, while scholars have examined academic genealogy and doctoral mentoring with relationship to productivity (e.g., Crosta & Packman, 2005;Malmegren, Ottino, & Amaral, 2010;Sugimoto et al, 2008), they have neglected to utilize the information embedded in academic mentoring networks as potential indicators of interdisciplinarity.…”

Boundary-spanning in emerging technology research: determinants of funding success for academic scientists

“…From a conceptual perspective, ''multidisciplinarity'' is seen as ''a basic situation in which elements from different disciplines are present'' (Morillo et al 2001, p. 204), while ''interdisciplinarity'' not only emphasizes multiple disciplinary dimensions, but also requires ''the integration of disciplines within a research environment'' (Thi and Lahatte 2003, p. 29). Therefore, interdisciplinary research work is achieved either by those researchers who themselves have strong knowledge and expertise in several different disciplines and draw from those disciplines in their work (Sigogneau et al 2005), or through active interdisciplinary collaboration with other researchers (Bordons et al 1999;Schummer 2004). Scientific collaboration is increasingly recognized as important for current scientific research (Thorsteinsdottir 2000).…”

An Exploratory Social Network Analysis of Academic Research Networks

“…Research collaboration is important in order to meet the big global challenges confronting science. In fact, an increasing number of topics require today an interdisciplinary treatment, being necessary the participation of department or organization belonging to different fields of knowledge [2], [3]. From the researchers point of view, group collaboration show that people who already have written a paper previously together are much more likely to succeed in future collaborations, as they have already paid the start-up costs of getting to know each other's languages, approaches and methodologies [4].…”