Archives des mots-clés : Interdisciplinarity

The measurement of “interdisciplinarity” and “synergy” in scientific and extra‐scientific collaborations

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Authors : Loet Leydesdorff, Inga Ivanova

Problem solving often requires crossing boundaries, such as those between disciplines. When policy‐makers call for “interdisciplinarity,” however, they often mean “synergy.” Synergy is generated when the whole offers more possibilities than the sum of its parts. An increase in the number of options above the sum of the options in subsets can be measured as redundancy; that is, the number of not‐yet‐realized options.

The number of options available to an innovation system for realization can be as decisive for the system’s survival as the historically already‐realized innovations. Unlike “interdisciplinarity,” “synergy” can also be generated in sectorial or geographical collaborations. The measurement of “synergy,” however, requires a methodology different from the measurement of “interdisciplinarity.”

In this study, we discuss recent advances in the operationalization and measurement of “interdisciplinarity,” and propose a methodology for measuring “synergy” based on information theory.

The sharing of meanings attributed to information from different perspectives can increase redundancy. Increasing redundancy reduces the relative uncertainty, for example, in niches.

The operationalization of the two concepts—“interdisciplinarity” and “synergy”—as different and partly overlapping indicators allows for distinguishing between the effects and the effectiveness of science‐policy interventions in research priorities.

URL : The measurement of “interdisciplinarity” and “synergy” in scientific and extra‐scientific collaborations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24416

The Common Ground of Open Access and Interdisciplinarity

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Author : Patrick Gamsby

In recent years, Open Access and interdisciplinarity have emerged as two prevalent trends in academia. Although seemingly separate pursuits with separate literature, goals, and advocates, there are significant interconnections between these two movements that have largely gone unnoticed.

This paper provides a philosophical inquiry into the unexplored relationship between these two trends and makes the case that there is an intrinsic affinity between Open Access and interdisciplinarity and, as such, concludes that all interdisciplinary research, to remain true to the foundational tenets of interdisciplinarity, ought to be Open Access.

URL : The Common Ground of Open Access and Interdisciplinarity

DOI : https://doi.org/10.3390/publications8010001

La recherche interventionnelle en santé : divers engagements dans la production collaborative de connaissances

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Auteur/Author : Philippe Terral

En prenant pour terrain d’enquête un domaine de recherche interdisciplinaire et collaboratif émergeant dans le secteur de la santé, les Recherches Interventionnelles en Santé des Populations (RISP), cette contribution se propose de considérer les diverses formes d’engagement dans la production de ce type de connaissances.

Sont ainsi repérées quatre figures d’engagement (afficher, éprouver, persévérer et figer) qui rendent compte de modes de coordination plus ou moins maximalistes entre les acteurs de ces recherches, en lien avec différentes conceptions et pratiques de la diffusion et de la circulation des connaissances.

L’enquête se base sur trois grands types de données : des observations ethnographiques de RISP ainsi que des congrès et réunions de groupes d’experts produisant des réflexions sur ce type de recherches, des analyses d’écrits (articles, rapports, lettres d’information…) sur les RISP et des entretiens (12) avec les principaux experts du domaine.

URL : https://journals.openedition.org/rfsic/4581

Consistency of interdisciplinarity measures

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Authors : Qi Wang, Jesper Wiborg Schneider

Assessing interdisciplinarity is an important and challenging work in bibliometric studies. Previous studies tend to emphasize that the nature and concept of interdisciplinary is ambiguous and uncertain (e.g. Leydesdorff & Rafols 2010, Rafols & Meyer, 2010, Sugimoto & Weingart, 2014).

As a consequence, various different measures of interdisciplinarity have been proposed. However, few studies have examined the relations between these measures. In this context, this paper aims to systematically review these interdisciplinarity measures, and explore their inherent relations.

We examine these measures in relation to the Web of Science (WoS) journal subject categories (SCs), and also an interdisciplinary research center at Aarhus University.

In line with the conclusion of Digital Science (2016), our results reveal that the current situation of interdisciplinarity measurement in science studies is confusing and unsatisfying. We obtained surprisingly dissimilar results with measures that supposedly should measure similar features.

We suggest that interdisciplinarity as a measurement construct should be used and interpreted with caution in future research evaluation and research policies.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.00577

Data-Sprinting: a Public Approach to Digital Research

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Authors : Tommaso Venturini, Anders Munk, Axel Meunier

This chapter is about the politics of interdisciplinarity. Not in the sense of the research politics fostering collaboration across disciplines, but in the stronger sense of transcending disciplinary boundaries to make significant political contributions.

In short: it is about making research public. To address this question, this chapter introduces (through a concrete example in climate debate research) an original research format, that we call data-sprinting.

URL : https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01672288

Exploration of an Interdisciplinary Scientific Landscape

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Author : Juste Raimbault

Patterns of interdisciplinarity in science can be quantified through diverse complementary dimensions. This paper studies as a case study the scientific environment of a generalist journal in Geography, Cybergeo, in order to introduce a novel methodology combining citation network analysis and semantic analysis.

We collect a large corpus of around 200,000 articles with their abstracts and the corresponding citation network that provides a first citation classification. Relevant keywords are extracted for each article through text-mining, allowing us to construct a semantic classification.

We study the qualitative patterns of relations between endogenous disciplines within each classification, and finally show the complementarity of classifications and of their associated interdisciplinarity measures. The tools we develop accordingly are open and reusable for similar large scale studies of scientific environments.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.00805

Betweenness and diversity in journal citation networks as measures of interdisciplinarity—A tribute to Eugene Garfield

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Authors : Loet Leydesdorff, Caroline S. Wagner, Lutz Bornmann

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 and Scopus. In addition to providing a basis for 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  or differentiation 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 the appendix, a general-purpose routine for measuring diversity in networks is provided.

URL : Betweenness and diversity in journal citation networks as measures of interdisciplinarity—A tribute to Eugene Garfield

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2528-2