A measure of knowledge flow between specific fields: Implications of interdisciplinarity for impact and funding

<div><p>Encouraging knowledge flow between mutually relevant disciplines is a worthy aim of research policy makers. Yet, it is less clear what types of research promote cross-disciplinary knowledge flow and whether such research generates particularly influential knowledge. Empirical questions remain as to how to identify knowledge-flow mediating research and how to provide support for this research. This study contributes to addressing these gaps by proposing a new way to identify knowledge-flow mediating research at the individual research article level, instead of at more aggregated levels. We identify journal articles that link two mutually relevant disciplines in three ways—aggregating, bridging, and diffusing. We then examine the likelihood that these papers receive subsequent citations or have funding acknowledgments. Our case study of cognitive science and educational research knowledge flow suggests that articles that aggregate knowledge from multiple disciplines are cited significantly more often than are those whose references are drawn primarily from a single discipline. Interestingly, the articles that meet the criteria for being considered knowledge-flow mediators are less likely to reflect funding, based on reported acknowledgements, than were those that did not meet these criteria. Based on these findings, we draw implications for research policymakers.</p></div

The mean number of citations received by articles published in ED, border, and CogSci journals, by age and KMED status.

<p>The mean number of citations received by articles published in ED, border, and CogSci journals, by age and KMED status.</p

Relationship among the three types of KMEDs.

<p>Black: % of the (starting point) KMED articles that are also categorized into the (ending-point) KMED. Blue: % of the articles that are not the (starting point) KMED but that are categorized into the (ending-point) KMED.</p

Definition of three types of KMEDs.

<p>Note: Aggregating-Type (A-type): More than x% of references of the article A are ED related sources and another more than x% of the references of the article A are CogSci related. Bridging-Type (B-type): More than x% of references comes from CogSci (ED) Sources while more than x% of the publications that cited the article A are published in ED (CogSci)-related sources. Diffusing-Type (D-type): More than x% of publications that cited the article A were published in CogSci related sources and another more than x% of publications citing the article A were published in ED related sources.</p

Number of articles in CogSci, ED, and border journals, by KMED type and year.

<p>Number of articles in CogSci, ED, and border journals, by KMED type and year.</p

Comparison of share of the articles with funding Acknowledgement by (non-KMEDs vs. KMEDs).

<p>Comparison of share of the articles with funding Acknowledgement by (non-KMEDs vs. KMEDs).</p