Promoting interdisciplinarity in the life sciences: a case study

Kate Baumwol, Sharon T Mortimer, Timothy R Huerta, Cameron D Norman and Alison M J Buchan

Research Evaluation, 2011, vol. 20, issue 4, 283-292

Abstract: Increasingly funders of life sciences research are promoting large interdisciplinary teams in order to address complex problems. This creates a dissonance with academic institutions that value and reward faculty members based on their independence. We have taken advantage of a natural experiment, the formation of a new life sciences institute, to evaluate research faculty attitudes towards interdisciplinary research. The majority of faculty surveyed engaged in interdisciplinary research; however they do not believe that it is supported or recognized by the university. These findings contrast with significant resistance to the new interdisciplinary organization from departments and faculty during the planning stages. Evaluating the impact of the new institute demonstrated that although the output (number of publications) did not change after the move the complexity of inter-departmental co-authorship patterns increased significantly. These data indicate that the intent of the new organizational structure to promote interdisciplinary research was becoming a reality. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/095820211X13118583635990 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:rseval:v:20:y:2011:i:4:p:283-292

Access Statistics for this article

Research Evaluation is currently edited by Julia Melkers, Emanuela Reale and Thed van Leeuwen

More articles in Research Evaluation from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().