Collective and individual interdisciplinarity in a sustainability research group: A social network analysis

Bruno Locatelli,Jacques Tassin,Améline Vallet,Denis Gautier,Aurélie Chamaret,Plinio Sist

doi:10.1007/s11625-020-00860-4

Abstract

In sustainability science, interdisciplinarity, i.e., the integration of perspectives from different disciplines, is built collectively from interactions among researchers of various disciplines (“collective interdisciplinarity”) but also results from the fact that researchers have backgrounds in multiple disciplines (“individual interdisciplinarity”). We applied social network analysis tools to analyze how individual interdisciplinarity influences collective interdisciplinarity, using the case of a forest sustainability science group. We hypothesized that researchers with higher individual interdisciplinarity had more interdisciplinary interactions and were interdisciplinary brokers within the group. We first analyzed individual interdisciplinarity using a bipartite network of researchers and disciplines. We then analyzed networks of management, research, and publication interactions among researchers in the research group. This showed how disciplines influenced interactions and how researchers contributed to interdisciplinary interactions and brokerage. Results of the first analysis identified large disciplinary communities in the center of the bipartite network, whereas smaller ones were more distant. The second analysis highlighted disciplinary homophily in interaction networks, as two researchers interacted more if they were from the same disciplinary community. Results also showed that the interactions among researchers were structured not only by disciplinary homophily, but also by other forms of homophily related to location or region of work. The key brokers of interactions across disciplinary communities were distributed across several communities, showing that brokerage was not controlled by the large, dominant communities. Analysis of correlations between individual interdisciplinarity and contributions to collective interdisciplinarity did not support our hypothesis but rather hinted at the alternative hypothesis that researchers with high individual interdisciplinarity interacted less with other disciplinary communities.

Highlights

Is a researcher trained in forest ecology who often interacts with other forest ecologists in her research on sustainable forest management
We address the following questions: What disciplinary communities emerge from the analysis of individual interdisciplinarity? Are there more interactions within disciplinary communities or outside them? How do disciplinary communities and other factors explain the existence of interactions between two scientists? Do brokers connect researchers within their disciplinary communities or across other communities? Do key interdisciplinary brokers in the group belong to specific disciplinary communities? Do researchers with higher individual interdisciplinarity contribute more to interdisciplinary interactions and brokerage? The two sections first present an analytical framework based on Social network analysis (SNA) before introducing the studied research group and the detailed methods
We have explored how individual interdisciplinarity at the level of researchers interacts with collective interdisciplinarity in a research group on sustainability science

Summary

Introduction

Is a researcher trained in forest ecology who often interacts with other forest ecologists in her research on sustainable forest management. While working on a large research project on forests and water, she has created strong working relationships with hydrologists and facilitated common work between hydrologists and geographers Through this fictitious example, we can question how Emily’s disciplines have influenced her interactions with other researchers in an interdisciplinary setting and whether Emily or other researchers with multiple disciplinary backgrounds play a special role in connecting scientists from other disciplines. Interdisciplinary research is generally defined by the integration of perspectives from different disciplines (including theoretical frameworks, approaches, and methods) into the study of a common problem (Aboelela et al 2007a; Wagner et al 2011) In addition to this general definition, different interpretations of interdisciplinarity have been proposed, depending on what is integrated, how it is done, and why (Huutoniemi et al 2010). The degree of interactions among disciplines makes interdisciplinarity different from multidisciplinarity (where a common question is studied by different disciplines, but without interactions) and transdisciplinarity (where interactions overcome disciplinary boundaries to create an overarching synthesis) (Blanchard and Vanderlinden 2010)

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion