Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T19:35:23.880Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Interdisciplinarity in the environmental sciences: barriers and frontiers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2010

CHRISTINA C. HICKS ,
CLARE FITZSIMMONS  and
NICHOLAS V. C. POLUNIN
CHRISTINA C. HICKS*
Affiliation:
School of Marine Science and Technology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD 4811Australia
CLARE FITZSIMMONS
Affiliation:
School of Marine Science and Technology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
NICHOLAS V. C. POLUNIN
Affiliation:
School of Marine Science and Technology, Newcastle University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
*
*Correspondence: Christina Hicks e-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Summary

Global environmental changes present unprecedented challenges to humans and the ecosystems upon which they depend. The need for interdisciplinary approaches to solve such multidimensional challenges is clear, however less clear is whether current attempts to cross disciplinary boundaries are succeeding. Indeed, efforts to further interdisciplinary approaches remain hampered by failures in assessing their scope and success. Here a set of measures examined the interdisciplinarity of the environmental sciences and tested two literature-based hypotheses: (1) newer and larger disciplines are more interdisciplinary; and (2) interdisciplinary research has lower impact factors than its counterparts. In addition, network analysis was used to map interdisciplinarity and determine the relative extent to which environmental science disciplines draw on alternative disciplinary perspectives. Contrary to expectations, age and size of a discipline had no effect on measures of interdisciplinarity for papers published in 2006, though metrics indicated larger articles and journals were more interdisciplinary. In addition, interdisciplinary research had a greater impact factor than its more strictly disciplinary peers. Network analysis revealed disciplines acting as ‘interdisciplinary frontiers’, bridging critical gaps between otherwise disparate subject areas. Whilst interdisciplinarity is complex, a combination of diversity metrics and network analysis provides valuable preliminary insights for interdisciplinary environmental research policy. The successful promotion of interdisciplinarity is needed to help dispel commonly perceived barriers to interdisciplinarity and create opportunities for such work by increasing the space available for different disciplines to encounter each other. In particular, the networks presented highlight the importance of considering disciplinary functioning within the wider context, to ensure maximum benefit to the scientific community as a whole.

Keywords

environmental sciencesinterdisciplinarityscience metricsscience policysocial network analysis
Type
THEMATIC ISSUE: Interdisciplinary Progress in Environmental Science & Management
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 37 , Issue 4: Thematic section. Interdisciplinary Progress in Environmental Science and Management , December 2010 , pp. 464 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amaral, L.A.N. & Uzzi, B. (2007) Complex systems. A new paradigm for the integrative study of management, physical, and technological systems. Management Science 53 (7): 1033–1035.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balsiger, P.W. (2004) Supradisciplinary research practices: history, objectives and rationale. Futures 36 (4): 407–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barry, A., Born, G. & Weszkalnys, G. (2008) Logics of interdisciplinarity. Economy and Society 37: 20–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bascompte, J., Jordano, P. & Olesen, J.M. (2006) Asymmetric coevolutionary networks facilitate biodiversity maintenance. Science 312 (5772): 431–433.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bordons, M., Morillo, F. & Gomez, I. (2004) Analysis of cross-disciplinary research through bibliometric tools. In: Handbook of Quantiative Science and Technology Research: the Use of Publication and Patent Statistics in Studies of S&T Systems, pp. 437–456. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.Google Scholar
Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. & Freeman, L.C. (2002) UCINET 6 For Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis [www document]. URL http://www.citeulike.org/user/eldaly/article/1030331 http://www.analytictech.com/Google Scholar
Bornmann, L., Wallon, G. & Ledin, A. (2008) Does the committee peer review select the best applicants for funding? An investigation of the selection process for two European molecular biology organization programmes. PLoS ONE 3 (10): e3480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1990) The Logic of Practice. Stanford, CA, USA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyack, K., Klavans, R. & Börner, K. (2005) Mapping the backbone of science. Scientometrics 64 (3): 351–374.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruce, A., Lyall, C., Tait, J. & Williams, R. (2004) Interdisciplinary integration in Europe: the case of the Fifth Framework programme. Futures 36 (4): 457–470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, L.M. (2005) Overcoming obstacles to interdisciplinary research. Conservation Biology 19 (2): 574–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapron, G. & Husté, A. L. (2009) Open, fair, and free journal ranking for researchers. Bioscience 56 (7): 558–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Choi, B.C.K. & Pak, A.W.P. (2007) Multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity in health research, services, education and policy: 2. Promotors, barriers, and strategies of enhancement. Clinical and Investigative Medicine 30: E224–E232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clarke, K. & Warwick, R. (2001) Changes in Marine Communities: An Approach to Statistical Analysis and Interpretation. Second edition. Plymouth, UK: Plymouth Marine Lab and PRIMER-E.Google Scholar
Daily, G.C. & Ehrlich, P.R. (1999) Managing earth's ecosystems: An interdisciplinary challenge. Ecosystems 2 (4): 277–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dalgaard, T., Hutchings, N.J. & Porter, J.R. (2003) Agroecology, scaling and interdisciplinarity. Agriculture Ecosystems and Environment 100 (1): 39–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dogan, M. & Pahre, R. (1990) Scholarly reputation and obsolescence in the social sciences: innovation as a team sport. International Social Science Journal 42 (3): 417–427.Google Scholar
Drews, J. (2000) Drug discovery: a historical perspective. Science 287 (5460): 1960–1964.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Egghe, L. & Leydesdorff, L. (2009) The relation between Pearson's correlation coefficient r and Salton's cosine measure. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60: 1027–1036.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, L. (1972) Segregation in social networks. Sociological Methods and Research 6: 411–430.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, L. (1977) A set of measures of centrality based on betweenness. Sociometry 40 (1): 35–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeman, L. (1979) Centrality in social networks conceptual clarification. Social networks 1 (3): 215–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garfield, E. (2004) Historiographic mapping of knowledge domains literature. Journal of Information Science 30 (2): 119–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heberlein, T. (1988) Improving interdisciplinary research: integrating the social and natural sciences. Society and Natural Resources 1 (1): 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HESA (2006) Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) Version 2. Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) [www document]. URL http://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_studrec&task=show_file&Itemid=233&mnl=07051&href=jacs2.htmlGoogle Scholar
IPCC (2007) Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II, and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Core Writing Team, ed. Pachauri, R.K. & Reisinger, A.. Geneva, Switzerland: IPCC.Google Scholar
Jackson, R.B., Randerson, J.T., Canadell, J.G., Anderson, R.G., Avissar, R., Baldocchi, D.D., Bonan, G.B., Caldeira, K., Diffenbaugh, N.S., Field, C.B., Hungate, B.A., Jobbagy, E.G., Kueppers, L.M., Nosetto, M.D. & Pataki, D.E. (2008) Protecting climate with forests. Environmental Research Letters 3 (4): 5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jakobsen, C.H., Hels, T. & McLaughlin, W.J. (2004) Barriers and facilitators to integration among scientists in transdisciplinary landscape analyses: a cross-country comparison. Forest Policy and Economics 6 (1): 15–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karlqvist, A. (1999) Going beyond disciplines. The meanings of interdisciplinarity. Policy Sciences 32 (4): 379–383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, J. (1990) Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, and Practice. Detroit, MI, USA: Wayne State University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, J.T. (2008) Evaluation of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. A literature review. American Journal of Preventive Medicine 35 (2): S116–S123.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klein, K.K., Smith, E.G. & Zentner, R.P. (1998) Interdisciplinary agricultural research in Canada. Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics-Revue Canadienne D Agroeconomie 46 (3): 259–272.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kueffer, C., Hadorn, G. H., Bammer, G., van Kerkhoff, L. & Pohl, C. (2007) Towards a publication culture in transdisciplinary research. Gaia. Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society 16 (1): 22–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lele, S. & Norgaard, R.B. (2005) Practicing interdisciplinarity. Bioscience 55 (11): 967–975.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levitt, J.M. & Thelwall, M. (2008) Is multidisciplinary research more highly cited? A macrolevel study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59 (12): 1973–1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydesdorff, L. (2007 a) Betweenness centrality as an indicator of the interdisciplinarity of scientific journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58 (9): 1303– 1319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydesdorff, L. (2007 b) Mapping interdisciplinarity at the interfaces between the science citation index and the social science citation index. Scientometrics 71 (3): 391–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydesdorff, L. (2008) Caveats for the use of citation indicators in research and journal evaluations. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59: 278–287.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydesdorff, L. & Rafols, I. (2009) A global map of science based on the ISI subject categories. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60 (2): 348–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leydesdorff, L., de Moya-Anegón, F. & Guerrero-Bote, V.P. (2010) Journal maps on the basis of Scopus data: a comparison with the journal citation reports of the ISI. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 61 (2): 352–369.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, P. & Phillipson, J. (2006) Reflexive interdisciplinary research: the making of a research programme on the rural economy and land use. Journal of Agricultural Economics 57 (2): 165–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, P. & Phillipson, J. (2009) Barriers to research collaboration across disciplines: scientific paradigms and institutional practices. Environment and Planning A 41 (5): 1171–1184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, P., Whitman, G. & Phillipson, J. (2009) Ecology and the social sciences. Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2): 297–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacMynowski, D.P. (2007) Pausing at the brink of interdisciplinarity: power and knowledge at the meeting of social and biophysical science. Ecology and Society 12 (1): 20 [www document]. URL http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art20/CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansilla, V.B. (2006) Assessing expert interdisciplinary work at the frontier: an empirical exploration. Research Evaluation 15 (1): 17–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansilla, V.B., Feller, I. & Gardner, H. (2006) Quality assessment in interdisciplinary research and education. Research Evaluation 15 (1): 69–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Max-Neef, M.A. (2005) Foundations of transdisciplinarity. Ecological Economics 53 (1): 5–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAleece, N., Lambshead, P., Paterson, G. & Gage, J. (1997) BioDiversity Pro. A program for analysing ecological data. Natural History Museum, London, UK.Google Scholar
McWilliam, E., Hearn, G. & Haseman, B. (2008) Transdisciplinarity for creative futures: what barriers and opportunities? Innovations in Education and Teaching International 45 (3): 247–253.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meybeck, M. (2003) Global analysis of river systems: from Earth system controls to Anthropocene syndromes. Philosophical TransActions of the Royal Society London Series B – Biological Science 358 (1440): 1935–1955.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Michon, F. & Tummers, M. (2009) The dynamic interest in topics within the biomedical scientific community. PLoS ONE 4 (8): e6544.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, ed. (2005) Ecosystems and human well-being: synthesis [www document]. URL http://www.millenniumassessment.org/documents/document.356.aspx.pdfGoogle Scholar
Miller, T.R., Baird, T.D., Littlefield, C.M., Kofinas, G., Chapin, F.S. & Redman, C.L. (2008) Epistemological pluralism: reorganizing interdisciplinary research. Ecology and Society 13 (2): 17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moed, H.F. (2005) Citation analysis of scientific journals and journal impact measures. Current Science 89 (12): 1990–1996.Google Scholar
Morillo, F., Bordons, M. & Gomez, I. (2001) An approach to interdisciplinarity bibliometric indicators. Scientometrics 51 (1): 203–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morillo, F., Bordons, M. & Gomez, I. (2003) Interdisciplinarity in science: a tentative typology of disciplines and research areas. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 54 (13): 1237–1249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moya-Anegon, F., Vargas-Quesada, B., Herrero-Solana, V., Chinchilla-Rodriguez, Z., Corera-Alvarez, E. & Munoz-Fernandez, F.J. (2004) A new technique for building maps of large scientific domains based on the cocitation of classes and categories. Scientometrics 61 (1): 129–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
OECD, ed. (1998) Interdisciplinarity in Science and Technology. Paris, France: OECD, Directorate for Science, Technology and Industry.Google Scholar
Olden, J.D. (2007) How do ecological journals stack-up? Ranking of scientific quality according to the h index. Ecoscience 14 (3): 370–376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Omenn, G.S. (2006) Grand challenges and great opportunities in science, technology, and public policy. Science 314 (5806): 1696–1704.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pickett, S.T.A., Burch, W.R. & Grove, J.M. (1999) Interdisciplinary research: maintaining the constructive impulse in a culture of criticism. Ecosystems 2 (4): 302–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pierce, S. (1999) Boundary crossing in research literatures as a means of interdisciplinary information transfer. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 50 (3): 271–279.3.0.CO;2-M>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Porter, A.L. & Rafols, I. (2009) Is science becoming more interdisciplinary? Measuring and mapping six research fields over time. Scientometrics 81 (3): 719–745.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pudovkin, A.I. & Garfield, E. (2002) Algorithmic procedure for finding semantically related journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53: 1113–1119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quinn, G. & Keough, M. (2002) Experimental Design and Data Analysis for Biologists. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rafols, I. & Leydesdorff, L. (2009) Content-based and algorithmic classifications of journals: perspectives on the dynamics of scientific communication and indexer effects. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 60 (9): 1823–1835.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhoten, D. & Parker, A. (2004) Risks and rewards of an interdisciplinary research path. Science 306 (5704): 2046–2046.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rinia, E.J., van Leeuwen, T.N., Bruins, E.E.W., van Vuren, H.G. & van Raan, A.F.J. (2002 a) Measuring knowledge transfer between fields of science. Scientometrics 54 (3): 347–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rinia, E.J., Van Leeuwen, T.N. & Van Raan, A.F.J. (2002 b) Impact measures of interdisciplinary research in physics. Scientometrics 53 (2): 241–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rinia, E.J., van Leeuwen, T.N., van Vuren, H.G. & van Raan, A.F.J. (1998) Comparative analysis of a set of bibliometric indicators and central peer review criteria. Evaluation of condensed matter physics in the Netherlands. Research Policy 27 (1): 95–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shinn, T. (1999) Change or mutation? Reflections on the foundations of contemporary science. Social Science Information Sur Les Sciences Sociales 38 (1): 149–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steele, T.W. & Stier, J.C. (2000) The impact of interdisciplinary research in the environmental sciences: a forestry case study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51 (5): 476–484.3.0.CO;2-G>CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stirling, A. (2007) A general framework for analysing diversity in science, technology and society. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 4 (15): 707–719.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Strathern, M. (2006) A community of critics? Thoughts on new knowledge. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12 (1): 191–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Todd, P.A., Guest, J.R., Lu, J. & Ming Chou, L. (2010) One in four citations in marine biology papers are inappropriate. Marine Ecology Progress Series doi: 10.3354/meps08587 (in press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tress, B., Tress, G. & Fry, G. (2005 a) Researchers’ experiences, positive and negative, in integrative landscape projects. Environmental Management 36 (6): 792–807.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tress, G., Tress, B. & Fry, G. (2005 b) Clarifying integrative research concepts in landscape ecology. Landscape Ecology 20 (4): 479–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turner, M.G. & Carpenter, S.R. (1999) Tips and traps in interdisciplinary research. Ecosystems 2 (4): 275–276.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Leeuwen, T.N., Moed, H.F., Tijssen, R.J.W., Visser, M.S. & van Raan, A.F.J. (2000) First evidence of serious language-bias in the use of citation analysis for the evaluation of national science systems. Research Evaluation 9 (2): 155–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walker, R., Moore, N.J., Arima, E., Perz, S., Simmons, C., Caldas, M., Vergara, D. & Bohrer, C. (2009) Protecting the Amazon with protected areas. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science U S A 106 (26): 10582–10586.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wasserman, S. & Faust, K. (1994) Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wey, T., Blumstein, D.T., Shen, W. & Jordan, F. (2008) Social network analysis of animal behaviour: a promising tool for the study of sociality. Animal Behaviour 75: 333–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Hicks supplementary material

Hicks supplementary material

Download Hicks supplementary material(File)
File 1.1 MB