Abstract
In order to maintain food security and sustainability of production under climate change, interdisciplinary and international collaboration in research is essential. In the EU, knowledge hubs are important funding instruments for the development of an interconnected European Research Area. Here, network analysis was used to assess whether the pilot knowledge hub MACSUR has affected interdisciplinary collaboration, using co-authorship of peer reviewed articles as a measure of collaboration. The broad community of all authors identified as active in the field of agriculture and climate change was increasingly well connected over the period studied. Between knowledge hub members, changes in network parameters suggest an increase in collaborative interaction beyond that expected due to network growth, and greater than that found in the broader community. Given that interdisciplinary networks often take several years to have an impact on research outputs, these changes within the relatively new MACSUR community provide evidence that the knowledge hub structure has been effective in stimulating collaboration. However, analysis showed that knowledge hub partners were initially well-connected, suggesting that the initiative may have gathered together researchers with particular resources or inclinations towards collaborative working. Long term, consistent funding and ongoing reflection to improve networking structures may be necessary to sustain the early positive signs from MACSUR, to extend its success to a wider community of researchers, or to repeat it in less connected fields of science. Tackling complex challenges such as climate change will require research structures that can effectively support and utilise the diversity of talents beyond the already well-connected core of scientists at major research institutes. But network research shows that this core, well-connected group are vital brokers in achieving wider integration.
Highlights
The complex societal challenges of climate change and sustainability are key components of both national and international science strategies and are reflected in national and international funding mechanisms (The Royal Society 2011)
In order to identify the community of researchers collaborating in subject areas related to MACSUR, data on co-authorship was extracted from research articles published in journals indexed by the Web of Science (WoS) database, limited to papers published in the period 2008–2012 and 2012–2014
Changes in the structure of the MACSUR partners’ network were distinct from those observed at the level of the broader Climate Change and agriculture network, indicating a positive impact of MACSUR even a relatively short time after its initiation. Specific funding initiatives, such as the FACCE Joint Programming Initiatives (JPI) knowledge hub MACSUR, are aimed at increasing international and inter-disciplinary collaboration, in order to increase capacity to tackle the challenges of Climate Change
Summary
The complex societal challenges of climate change and sustainability are key components of both national and international science strategies and are reflected in national and international funding mechanisms (The Royal Society 2011). Climate change is occurring against a backdrop of large scale and complex socio-economic change, including global population increases and dietary changes towards livestock products in the developing world (Thornton 2010; Tilman and Clark 2014) In this context, the agricultural sector is required to create and maintain sustainable production systems capable of ensuring food security in the long term while at the same time addressing the dual challenges of mitigating and adapting to a changing climate (Beddington 2011; Lipper et al 2014). We aim to evaluate the potential of knowledge hubs to build community cohesion and facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, by comparing the structure of the scientific community before and during the active period of MACSUR (Modelling European Agriculture with Climate Change for Food Security), the first FACCE-JPI Knowledge Hub
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