The new journal Palgrave Communications aims to support interdisciplinary development by offering a high-quality outlet for research in the humanities, the social sciences and business, hoping to foster interaction, creativity and reflection within and between disciplines. Sam Burridge provides an initial overview of the new outlet. But developing truly collaborative research takes time, a feature with little appreciation in funding and policy demands, and dialogue. Editorial board member Michele Acuto finds that as we strive for truly interdisciplinary research, between social and natural sciences, and for truly global research, as a balanced dialogue between north and south, the issue of how and where we publish is an important facet of interdisciplinary development

Acuto, Michele

Burridge, Sam

LSE Research Online

5/20/2014Publishers respond to growing need for collaboration byoffering an open access home for interdisciplinaryresearch.blogs.lse.ac.uk /impactofsocialsciences/2014/05/20/finding-a-home-for-interdisciplinary-research/The new journal Palgrave Communications aims to support interdisciplinary development by offering a high-quality outlet for research in the humanities, the social sciences andbusiness, hoping to foster interaction, creativity and reflection within andbetween disciplines. Sam Burridge provides an initial overview of the newoutlet. But developing truly collaborative research takes time, a feature withlittle appreciation in funding and policy demands, and dialogue. Editorialboard member Michele Acuto  finds that as we strive for trulyinterdisciplinary research, between social and natural sciences, and for trulyglobal research, as a balanced dialogue between north and south, the issueof how and where we publish is an important facet of interdisciplinarydevelopment. Sam Burridge, Managing Director of Open Research PalgraveMacmillan/Nature Publishing GroupOptions for open access publication have been increasingly abundant fairly widely for scientistsover recent years. But there are fewer options if you are a sociologist, fewer still if you are ahistorian. And the options don’t increase if you are conducting interdisciplinary research, with manyjournals still reflecting traditional discipline boundaries.We see this as a particular need given the rise of funding streams for interdisciplinary work: What ifyour funder mandates that you must publish open access – but you can’t find a journal which is theright fit for your findings? And then there is the rather more idealistic premise that interdisciplinary thinking canbenefit the outcomes and breadth of use of research and therefore society as a whole.This is why we’ve launched Palgrave Communications  – a high-quality peer-reviewed research in all areas of thehumanities, the social sciences and business. The new journal will champion, and particularly welcomeinterdisciplinary research, fostering interaction, creativity and reflection within and between disciplines.Palgrave Communications will offer immediate, free online dissemination via a CC BY license (other licenses areavailable on request.)  Many open access journals will pledge to publish all work so long as it is methodologicallysound, but Palgrave Communications is committed to high-quality, original research, published speedily. In order tohelp us do this, we hope to build an editorial board of hundreds of expert scholars across the HSS subjects. Wealready have over eighty editorial board members.As costs are involved in every stage of the publication process, from peer-review to curation, copy editing,production of multiple formats and hosting the final article on dedicated servers, authors will be asked to pay anarticle-processing charge (APC) in order for their article to be published open access, without access control. Afterpaying the one-off APC of £750+VAT, if they would like authors can also post the final, published PDF of their articleon a web site, institutional repository or other free public server, immediately on publication.We hope that eventually, Palgrave Communications will be the definitive peer-reviewed outlet for open accessacademic research, in and between our subjects; giving high quality, interdisciplinary research a home, and makingit open and accessible too.1/3Michele Acuto, editorial board member of Palgrave CommunicationsCertainly “interdisciplinary” has for the past few years been an increasingly common buzz word foracademia and the ecosystem of institutions shaping the science-policy interface. Governmentalresearch councils push towards greater ‘exploratory’ methods and ‘cross-domain’ interactions tointegrate various modes of scholarly inquiry. International and regional institutions linkinguniversities and inter-state cooperation bodies, like the European Research Council, promote grantfunding and research initiatives based on collaborative modes of engagement between disciplinesand sub-disciplines. The ‘impact agenda’ in the UK (and increasingly Australia), has laid some firm critiques againstsilo-ed academic inquiry, while the extensive focus on ‘capacity building’ in the UN and multilateral arena, includingWorld Bank or OECD, has been setting increasing cooperation demands on academics in specific disciplines. Inshort, the time is ripe for successful and well-funded interdisciplinary research.The challenges of interdisciplinary research are, nonetheless, momentous and certainly more and more pressing asthis demand grows. Typically, interdisciplinary research is confronted by a challenge of effective and productivecommunication. Even in the 21st century, academic disciplines remain silo-ed into relatively different linguistic stylesand terminologies, presenting substantial barriers to direct and productive cross-disciplinary discussions. AsBracken and Oughton recently highlighted this is for instance the case of geography, which could be seen asboundary discipline between social and natural worlds, and yet also as strongly divided camp where former andlatter ‘currents’ almost constantly constitute two separated realities.As a member of the Department of Science, Engineering, Technology and Public Policy (or STEaPP) at UCL inLondon, I can testify that some universities have attempted to respond to this pressing gap. Being raised as a purelysocial scientist and yet working in the heart of STEM research in UCL’s faculties of Engineering Sciences and BuiltEnvironment, I regularly witness the confrontation of social and natural modes of enquiry, which require complex,and not least humble, shifts of viewpoints by scholars in all disciplines. Crucially, outlets like PalgraveCommunications present a very important step in this direction, where publishers  offer a response to the need forexperimental arenas where to connect, for instance, engineers, geographers and artists.Academics are also inevitably confronted by a second pressing challenge: rigour in the face of a need forintelligibility. We are faced with the need to retain solid scientific bases and theoretical development of theirrespective traditions versus a spreading ‘light touch interdisciplinarity’ that sees superficial engagements betweendisciplines for the sake of funding streams and ‘innovative’ policy advice. Developing truly collaborative researchtakes time, a feature with little appreciation in funding and policy demands, and dialogue, something projects likePalgrave Communications can help with enormously.This is all the more relevant when the costs of interdisciplinary collaboration, alongside the costs of truly globalresearch that engages ‘North’ and ‘South’ universities on equal grounds, are increasingly influential. Light touchinterdisciplinarity is most deleterious when coupled with scholarly variants of development tourism, where Northerninstitutions shop for brief cross-institutional and cross-disciplinary encounters in the ‘South’ for the sake of greaterfunding pools, PR and outreach. Interdisciplinary engagement, while still dependent on substantial funding from theglobal North, can and should be developed on equal partnership ground. The recent scheme of cooperationbetween UK Research Councils and Brazil’s FAPESP (the Sao Paulo Research Foundation) are upsetting thestatus quo.Overall Palgrave Communications has begun to answer some of these challenges: it offers open access options atrelatively (by Western standards for the moment) affordable rates, it was thought from the beginning, rather than aspromotional branding, as a widely cross-disciplinary outlet, and has the backing of a large and solid publishercapable of reaching out internationally as well as of linking directly with the (wide) sphere of STEM research via itsNature Publishing Group connection, while ‘getting into the real world’ – a fundamental step to get out of ivory towermodels. Interdisciplinarity is in fact often an academic challenge more than a policy obstacle: academiccollaboration needs to be spurred by pressing problems in ‘the field’ where the subtle differences between realist2/3and neorealist IR, or ANT and SCOT sociology, might have little impact on everyday policy challenges. Here thecollaboration between STEM and social sciences, amongst others, might offer some of the most promising fruits.From the vantage point of UK research, the possibilities and incentives for interdisciplinary research are many.However, as we strive for truly interdisciplinary research, between social and natural sciences, and for truly globalresearch, as a balanced dialogue between north and south, we are inevitably reminded that the path ahead needsto become a more systematic, patient, practice-oriented and concerted effort. Publishing is a partial answer.Education should follow suit.Featured image credit: Brenderous (Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA)Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Impact of Social Science blog, nor of theLondon School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have any concerns on posting a commentbelow.About the AuthorsSam Burridge is Managing Director, Open Research, Palgrave Macmillan/Nature Publishing Group. JoiningMacmillan in 1995, Sam started as a Sales Representative for Eastern and Central Europe. During her time atPalgrave she has fulfilled several senior roles across sales, business development and executive publishing. InJanuary 2014 Sam took on her current role of Managing Director, Open Research of Palgrave Macmillan/NaturePublishing Group.Michele Acuto  is Research Director and Senior Lecturer in Global Networks and Diplomacy in the Department ofScience, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP) at University College London, and an associatefellow of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society at the University of Oxford. Michele leads the CityLeadership Initiative at UCL, in partnership with World Bank and UN-Habitat, and the section on Science,Technology, Art and International Relations (STAIR) of the International Studies Association.Copyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution Unported 3.0 License.3/3

Publishers respond to growing need for collaboration by offering an open access home for interdisciplinary research.

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