21,310 research outputs found
On the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact
This paper analyzes the effect of interdisciplinarity on the scientific
impact of individual papers. Using all the papers published in Web of Science
in 2000, we define the degree of interdisciplinarity of a given paper as the
percentage of its cited references made to journals of other disciplines. We
show that, although for all disciplines combined there is no clear correlation
between the level of interdisciplinarity of papers and their citation rates,
there are nonetheless some disciplines in which a higher level of
interdisciplinarity is related to a higher citation rates. For other
disciplines, citations decline as interdisciplinarity grows. One characteristic
is visible in all disciplines: highly disciplinary and highly interdisciplinary
papers have a low scientific impact. This suggests that there might be an
optimum of interdisciplinarity beyond which the research is too dispersed to
find its niche and under which it is too mainstream to have high impact.
Finally, the relationship between interdisciplinarity and scientific impact is
highly determined by the citation characteristics of the disciplines involved:
papers citing citation intensive disciplines are more likely to be cited by
those disciplines and, hence, obtain higher citation scores than papers citing
non citation intensive disciplines.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, 1 table. Forthcoming in JASIS
Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country
This paper explores the relationship between interdisciplinarity and research
pertaining to local issues. Using Colombian publications from 1991 until 2011
in the Web of Science, we investigate the relationship between the degree of
interdisciplinarity and the local orientation of the articles. We find that a
higher degree of interdisciplinarity in a publication is associated with a
greater emphasis on Colombian issues. In particular, our results suggest that
research that combines cognitively disparate disciplines, what we refer to as
distal interdisciplinarity, tends to be associated with more local focus of
research. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of
policies aiming to foster the local socio-economic impact of research in
developing countries.Comment: 24 page
Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country
This paper examines the role of interdisciplinarity on research pertaining to local issues. Using Colombian publications from 1991 until 2011 in the Web of Science, we investigate the relationship between the degree of interdisciplinarity and the local orientation of the articles. We find that a higher degree of interdisciplinarity in a publication is associated with a greater emphasis on local issues. In particular, our results support the view that research that combines cognitively disparate disciplines, what we refer to as distal interdisciplinarity, is associated with more local focus of research. We discuss the policy implications of these results in the context of national research assessments targeting excellence and socio-economic impact
Feature analysis of multidisciplinary scientific collaboration patterns based on PNAS
The features of collaboration patterns are often considered to be different
from discipline to discipline. Meanwhile, collaborating among disciplines is an
obvious feature emerged in modern scientific research, which incubates several
interdisciplines. The features of collaborations in and among the disciplines
of biological, physical and social sciences are analyzed based on 52,803 papers
published in a multidisciplinary journal PNAS during 1999 to 2013. From those
data, we found similar transitivity and assortativity of collaboration patterns
as well as the identical distribution type of collaborators per author and that
of papers per author, namely a mixture of generalized Poisson and power-law
distributions. In addition, we found that interdisciplinary research is
undertaken by a considerable fraction of authors, not just those with many
collaborators or those with many papers. This case study provides a window for
understanding aspects of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration
patterns
How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinary research. A comparison between Innovation Studies and Business & Management
This study provides quantitative evidence on how the use of journal rankings
can disadvantage interdisciplinary research in research evaluations. Using
publication and citation data, it compares the degree of interdisciplinarity
and the research performance of a number of Innovation Studies units with that
of leading Business & Management schools in the UK. On the basis of various
mappings and metrics, this study shows that: (i) Innovation Studies units are
consistently more interdisciplinary in their research than Business &
Management schools; (ii) the top journals in the Association of Business
Schools' rankings span a less diverse set of disciplines than lower-ranked
journals; (iii) this results in a more favourable assessment of the performance
of Business & Management schools, which are more disciplinary-focused. This
citation-based analysis challenges the journal ranking-based assessment. In
short, the investigation illustrates how ostensibly 'excellence-based' journal
rankings exhibit a systematic bias in favour of mono-disciplinary research. The
paper concludes with a discussion of implications of these phenomena, in
particular how the bias is likely to affect negatively the evaluation and
associated financial resourcing of interdisciplinary research organisations,
and may result in researchers becoming more compliant with disciplinary
authority over time.Comment: 41 pages, 10 figure
Crossing the interdisciplinary divide : political science and biological science
This article argues that interdisciplinary collaboration can offer significant intellectual gains to political science in terms of methodological insights, questioning received assumptions and providing new perspectives on subject fields. Collaboration with natural scientists has been less common than collaboration with social scientists, but can be intellectually more rewarding. Interdisciplinary work with biological scientists can be especially valuable given the history of links between the two subjects and the similarity of some of the methodological challenges faced. The authors have been involved in two projects with biological scientists and this has led them critically to explore issues relating to the philosophy of science, in particular the similarities and differences between social and natural science, focusing on three issues: the problem of agency, the experimental research design and the individualistic fallacy. It is argued that interdisciplinary research can be fostered through shared understandings of what constitutes 'justified beliefs'. Political science can help natural scientists to understand a more sophisticated understanding of the policy process. Such research brings a number of practical challenges and the authors explain how they have sought to overcome them
Betweenness and Diversity in Journal Citation Networks as Measures of Interdisciplinarity -- A Tribute to Eugene Garfield --
Journals were central to Eugene Garfield's research interests. Among other
things, journals are considered as units of analysis for bibliographic
databases such as the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus. In addition to
disciplinary classifications of journals, journal citation patterns span
networks across boundaries to variable extents. Using betweenness centrality
(BC) and diversity, we elaborate on the question of how to distinguish and rank
journals in terms of interdisciplinarity. Interdisciplinarity, however, is
difficult to operationalize in the absence of an operational definition of
disciplines, the diversity of a unit of analysis is sample-dependent. BC can be
considered as a measure of multi-disciplinarity. Diversity of co-citation in a
citing document has been considered as an indicator of knowledge integration,
but an author can also generate trans-disciplinary--that is,
non-disciplined--variation by citing sources from other disciplines. Diversity
in the bibliographic coupling among citing documents can analogously be
considered as diffusion of knowledge across disciplines. Because the citation
networks in the cited direction reflect both structure and variation, diversity
in this direction is perhaps the best available measure of interdisciplinarity
at the journal level. Furthermore, diversity is based on a summation and can
therefore be decomposed, differences among (sub)sets can be tested for
statistical significance. In an appendix, a general-purpose routine for
measuring diversity in networks is provided
Science Quality and the Value of Inventions
Despite decades of research, the relationship between the quality of science
and the value of inventions has remained unclear. We present the result of a
large-scale matching exercise between 4.8 million patent families and 43
million publication records. We find a strong positive relationship between
quality of scientific contributions referenced in patents and the value of the
respective inventions. We rank patents by the quality of the science they are
linked to. Strikingly, high-rank patents are twice as valuable as low-rank
patents, which in turn are about as valuable as patents without direct science
link. We show this core result for various science quality and patent value
measures. The effect of science quality on patent value remains relevant even
when science is linked indirectly through other patents. Our findings imply
that what is considered "excellent" within the science sector also leads to
outstanding outcomes in the technological or commercial realm.Comment: 44 page
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