Types Of Interdisciplinarity Research Articles

Mobility - polysemy with interdisciplinary valences

"The paper aims to demonstrate the inseparable interconnections between “social mobility”, “intellectual mobility” and “spatial mobility” (residential and traffic/trips). The broad themes of mobility reveal the unity that emerges from the ontological, sociological, and epistemic connections among various disciplines belonging to the human, natural and applied sciences. This unity of the disciplines involved in the study of mobility leads to interdisciplinarity. Three types of interdisciplinarity are identified and exemplified. The functions of interdisciplinarity result from the multiple structures involved in mobility research. To meet these functions, the contributions of the disciplines from several fields are decisive. But, disciplinary analysis, as a straightforward technique, monotonous and strictly specialized research tends to isolate experts in groups. Therefore, a further interdisciplinary approach is required to reach the finality of theoretical and applied research. Consequently, the path that research has been taken and will repeatedly continue starts from disciplinary research towards interdisciplinary research, and returns to disciplines, for improvement. "

Why do Environmental and Ecological Economics Diverge?

Environmental economics and ecological economics became established scientific fields as a result of the growth and the success of the environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s. Using the strong programme in the sociology of scientific knowledge and the general theory of scientific/intellectual movements, this article compares four pairs of scholars (two pairs of scholars appropriated for these fields and fields' founders during the emergence and establishment of the fields). The article depicts how their institutional, ideological and scientific backgrounds contributed to the divergence of these fields. Practitioners of environmental economics and ecological economics were influenced by different strands of the environmental movement. Environmental economics has epistemological and institutional links with environmentalism and ecological economics with ecologism. Different types of interdisciplinarity were used in these fields—a bridge building type of interdisciplinarity in the case of environmental economics and a restructuring and integrative in the case of ecological economics.

The Effects of Interdisciplinarity on R&D Performance: The Efficacy of Knowledge Recombination

Successful knowledge application from distant disciplines drives the performance of R&D projects, in particular in the case of breakthrough technologies. To translate knowledge recombination into innovations, organizations engage in interdisciplinary research projects. Applying a knowledge-based view, we investigate whether and under which conditions the degree of interdisciplinarity increases R&D performance. We consider different types of interdisciplinarity and argue that research results diversity (distance of covered technological concepts in research results) enhances R&D performance but team diversity (functional diversity of involved researchers) and knowledge base diversity (research field diversity of integrated prior literature) add to the knowledge recombination complexity inhibiting R&D performance. Following a mixed method approach, we ground our hypotheses in a qualitative pre-study within the context of an interdisciplinary project utilizing algae extracts for medical applications and employ bibliometric data in the biomarine field. Our results show a positive effect of research results diversity on R&D performance with diminishing returns (inverted U-shape). Team diversity has no direct effect on performance but complicates the recombination of knowledge in interdisciplinary projects (negative interaction). Knowledge base diversity has a negative impact on R&D performance. To foster innovations, organizations should pro-actively recombine knowledge from diverse research domains in collaboration projects, yet, stay focused.

Interdisciplinarity of Information Science Research: Introduction

Purpose/Thesis: The article aims to present and discuss some introductory reflections on the nature of interdisciplinarity of research conducted in the field of information science and its effect on the reorganization of the institutional setting of the discipline.Approach/Methods: This is a conceptual review article based on theoretical considerations and critical analysis of the concept of interdisciplinarity and the features of interdisciplinary approaches employed in information science research and its effect on the position of information science in university structure.Results and Conclusions: The concept of interdisciplinarity is discussed with reference to two aspects of the development of science: specialization and integration. The article presents selected typologies of interdisciplinarity and discusses the changes in the perception of the concept of discipline. Interdisciplinarity has been discussed as an inherent feature of information science. The types of interdisciplinarity that best correspond to the specificity of the interdisciplinary approach used in information science research has been indicated. Referring to previous studies, the article sketches the most characteristic interdisciplinary connections of information science. In general, the review shows that apart from the permanent relationship with social sciences, in particular with library science and computer science, the relationships between information science and other disciplines are variable and quite loose. Stronger relationships are most often generated through practical activity in related disciplines, in which specialized information services are the most developed and widely used.Originality/Value: The view that information science is by its very nature an interdisciplinary field of research is common among information researchers and information professionals. Much research has been done on the interdisciplinary connections of the discipline, however, by the best author’s knowledge, few of them analyzed the specificity of interdisciplinarity of this field of research. This article attempts to initiate an in-depth discussion on this issue.

The distinctiveness of author interdisciplinarity: A long-neglected issue in research on interdisciplinarity

In the research on interdisciplinarity (RID), measures for evaluating the interdisciplinarity of scientific entities (e.g., papers, authors, journals or research areas) have been proposed for a long time. The author interdisciplinarity is very different from the other types of interdisciplinarity because of the complex interpersonal relationships between the connected authors. However, previous work has failed to uncover the distinctiveness of author interdisciplinarity and has regarded it as equivalent to other types of interdisciplinarity. In this work, an extended Rao–Stirling diversity measure is proposed, which incorporates the co-author network and a network similarity measure to specifically evaluate the author interdisciplinarity. Moreover, betweenness centrality is used for improving network similarity measure, because of its intrinsic advantage of expressing how an entity loads on different factors in a network, which is highly in line with the characteristic of interdisciplinarity. An experiment on the papers about Public Administration in the Web of Science is conducted; based on the final results, a deeper investigation is performed into by typical authors. The work proposes a novel idea for measuring author interdisciplinarity, which can promote the study of interdisicplinarity measuring in RID.

A World of Materialisms

Research often characterized as “new materialist” has staged a return/turn to nature in social and critical theory by bringing “matter” into the purview of our research. While this growing impetus to take nature seriously fosters new types of interdisciplinarity and thus new resources for knowing our nature-cultural worlds, its capacity to deal with power’s imbrication in how we understand “nature” is curtailed by its failures to engage substantively with the epistemological interventions of postcolonial feminist science studies. The citational practices of many new materialist thinkers eschew the existence of what Sandra Harding has called “a world of sciences.” I argue that the “science” privileged and often conflated with matter in new materialist storytelling is the same science destabilized by postcolonial feminist science studies. This does not mean that new materialist feminisms and postcolonial feminist science studies are necessarily at odds, as new materialist storytelling and prevailing conceptualizations of the postcolonial seem to suggest. On the contrary, I suggest that thinking creatively, capaciously, pluralistically, and thus irreverently with respect to the rules of science––about the boundaries and meanings of matter, “life,” and “humanness”––could be understood as a central project for a postcolonial feminist science studies.

Sciences for the red zones of neoliberalism

In, this paper, I explore the need for particular types of interdisciplinarity, which I refer to as technical heteroglossia, in the face of neoliberal political and economic disenfranchisement. I examine the case of a group of medics (EMTs, nurses, and lay medical practitioners) known as street medics and their efforts to provide a working set of medical protocols for protesters, victims of natural disasters, and, more generally, communities resisting neoliberalism, militarism, and corporate power. To function, this network has had to explicitly embrace multiple medical traditions: allopathic (sometimes called Western), Chinese, herbalist, naturopathic, etc. Being able to speak within multiple traditions (medical heteroglossia) is deeply valued. I also recount the history of the medics and discuss at length the contextual forces that pull medics in different directions: allopathic medicine and more varied and unorthodox practices.

Science, interdisciplinarity, and the society

Science, interdisciplinarity, and the society

What is a problem?

Among others, the term “problem” plays a major role in the various attempts to characterize interdisciplinarity or transdisciplinarity, as used synonymously in this paper. Interdisciplinarity (ID) is regarded as “problem solving among science, technology and society” and as “problem orientation beyond disciplinary constraints” (cf. Frodeman et al.: The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010). The point of departure of this paper is that the discourse and practice of ID have problems with the “problem”. The objective here is to shed some light on the vague notion of “problem” in order to advocate a specific type of interdisciplinarity: problem-oriented interdisciplinarity. The outline is as follows: Taking an ex negativo approach, I will show what problem-oriented ID does not mean. Using references to well-established distinctions in philosophy of science, I will show three other types of ID that should not be placed under the umbrella term “problem-oriented ID”: object-oriented ID (“ontology”), theory-oriented ID (epistemology), and method-oriented ID (methodology). Different philosophical thought traditions can be related to these distinguishable meanings. I will then clarify the notion of “problem” by looking at three systematic elements: an undesired (initial) state, a desired (goal) state, and the barriers in getting from the one to the other. These three elements include three related kinds of knowledge: systems, target, and transformation knowledge. This paper elaborates further methodological and epistemological elements of problem-oriented ID. It concludes by stressing that problem-oriented ID is the most needed as well as the most challenging type of ID.

Tracing interdisciplinarity of converging technologies at the nanoscale: A critical analysis of recent nanotechnosciences

Besides ‘innovation’, ‘interdisciplinarity’ is one of the most popular buzzwords frequently used in present-day science policy. At the same time, however, ‘interdisciplinarity’ is vague and misty; the term is not well defined. In order to clarify its meaning, I classify different types of interdisciplinarity. By making use of analytical classification I show that a specific type of interdisciplinarity is involved in the nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science (NBIC) scenario on converging technologies (Roco–Bainbridge report of the US National Science Foundation). I argue that the NBIC scenario is based on a ‘technoobject-oriented interdisciplinarity’. This type of interdisciplinarity will be contrasted with the research program of the European Union on converging technologies (CTEKS) that widens the circles of convergence and aims to promote a different (‘problem-oriented’) type of interdisciplinarity.

Interdisciplinary Problem-Based Learning in Gerontology: A Plan of Action

Issues of older adults are often ill-structured and complex, requiring the application of insights from different disciplines to be adequately addressed. Gerontology has often used a multidisciplinary rather than an integrated interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary and problem-based learning (PBL) provide pedagogical tools which teach gerontology students skills for understanding and resolving gerontological issues. The paper presents the concepts of interdisciplinarity and problem-based learning, the types of interdisciplinarity (interdisciplinarity at micro and macro levels of analysis, interdisciplinarity with different attributes of the same unit of analysis), learning outcomes of interdisciplinarity and problem-based learning, the incorporation of interdisciplinary problem-based learning in academic programs, steps of interdisciplinary problem-based study of a gerontological issue, and directions for the future study of this approach.

Learning Interdisciplinarity: Sociocultural Perspectives on Academic Work

How do college and university faculty create interdisciplinary spaces in colleges and universities? A literal translation of this question suggests a focus on the development and maintenance of interdisciplinary degree programs or research centers. This interpretation is consistent with a tradition of research on faculty that focuses on structural conditions that foster productivity. A less literal translation considers the more intangible aspects of faculty work and of interdisciplinarity. Institutional structures and policies may provide incentives and opportunities for research and teaching, but interdisciplinarity requires a prior step: in order to take advantage of policies or programs that encourage interdisciplinarity, college and university faculty must undertake the learning that will allow them to pursue interdisciplinary research or teaching. Another interpretation of the concept of space, then, focuses attention on the imaginative work of interdisciplinarity, and one logical conclusion is to study both the material circumstances of faculty life and the cognitive work of interdisciplinary research and teaching. The danger in this conceptualization is the potential for repetition of the mind-body duality that is common in Western thought. If we frame learning (what happens 'in the head') as separate from lived experience (the physical locations and conditions in which it occurs), an individualistic and dualistic orientation results. We tend to study contexts and persons in contexts separately, often extracting the individual from his or her context in order to get a better look at the phenomenon of cognition. Many traditional psychological theories of learning and studies based on these theories manifest this assumption about the separate spheres of thinking and being. In contrast, sociological and anthropological theories focus intently on contexts and cultures: they are more apt to assume that analytic strategies should begin with an account of social phenomena and then, on the basis of these, develop analyses of individual mental functioning (see Kirshner & Whitson, 1997; Wertsch, 1998; for an extended discussion of these points). Today, theorists from various fields have begun to think about how to repair the mind-body duality, to argue that learning cannot be separated from the contexts in which it occurs, and to reconceptualize cognition and learning as activities that occur through social interaction. Using these theories as analytic lenses for studying faculty work, I examine how some faculty create spaces in which to pursue interdisciplinary thinking, research, and teaching. Since the first definitions were advanced in the 1930s, interdisciplinarity has been defined in numerous ways, and there is little consensus on its exact meaning. The definition that guided this work was developed by the Center for Educational Research and Innovation. This definition specifies a range of potential interdisciplinary interactions and thus can accommodate different, and even competing, types of interdisciplinarity: Interdisciplinary--An adjective describing the interaction among two or more different disciplines. This interaction may range from simple communication of ideas to the mutual integration of organising concepts, methodology, procedures, epistemology, terminology, data, and organisation of research and education in a fairly large field. An interdisciplinary group consists of persons trained in different fields of knowledge (disciplines) with different concepts, methods, and data and terms organised into a common effort on a common problem with continuous intercommunication among the participants from the different disciplines. (OECD, 1972, pp. 25-26) The definition clearly assumes a disciplinary basis for interdisciplinarity, but it does not exclude postmodem interdisciplinarity in which the disciplines are not central to modes of inquiry. …

The impact of interdisciplinary research in the environmental sciences: a forestry case study

Interdisciplinary research has been identified as a critical means of addressing some of our planet's most urgent environmental problems. Yet relatively little is known about the processes and impacts of interdisciplinary approaches to environmental sciences. This study used citation analysis and ordinary least squares regression to investigate the relationship between an article's citation rate and its degree of interdisciplinarity in one area of environmental science; viz., forestry. Three types of interdisciplinarity were recognized—authorship, subject matter, and cited literature—and each was quantified using Brillouin's diversity index. Data consisted of more than 750 articles published in the journal Forest Science during the 10-year period 1985–1994. The results indicate that borrowing was the most influential method of interdisciplinary information transfer. Articles that drew information from a diverse set of journals were cited with greater frequency than articles having smaller or more narrowly focused bibliographies. This finding provides empirical evidence that interdisciplinary methods have made a measurable and positive impact on the forestry literature.

The impact of interdisciplinary research in the environmental sciences: a forestry case study

Interdisciplinary research has been identified as a critical means of addressing some of our planet's most urgent environmental problems. Yet relatively little is known about the processes and impacts of interdisciplinary approaches to environmental sciences. This study used citation analysis and ordinary least squares regression to investigate the relationship between an article's citation rate and its degree of interdisciplinarity in one area of environmental science; viz., forestry. Three types of interdisciplinarity were recognized: authorship, subject matter, and cited literature, and each was quantified using Brillouin's diversity index. Data consisted of more than 750 articles published in the journal Forest Science during the 10-year period 1985-1994. The results indicate that borrowing was the most influential method of interdisciplinary information transfer. Articles that drew information from a diverse set of journals were cited with greater frequency than articles having smaller or more narrowly focused bibliographies. This finding provides empirical evidence that interdisciplinary methods have made a measurable and positive impact on the forestry literature.