Orientations and outcome of interdisciplinary research: the case of research behaviour in translational medical science

Finn Valentin, Maria Theresa Norn and Lars Alkaersig ()
Additional contact information
Finn Valentin: Copenhagen Business School
Maria Theresa Norn: The Think Tank DEA
Lars Alkaersig: Technical University of Denmark

Scientometrics, 2016, vol. 106, issue 1, No 5, 67-90

Abstract: Abstract The importance of interdisciplinary research in accelerating the progress and commercialization of science is widely recognized, yet little is known about how academic research self-organizes towards interdisciplinarity. In this paper, we therefore explore the micro-level behavior of researchers as they venture into a promising space for interdisciplinary research, namely translational research—a bridge between basic and applied biomedical research. More specifically, we ask (1) whether the researchers who choose to engage in translational research have a strong scientific record, (2) how interdisciplinary research spanning basic and applied research influences the output of academic research, and (3) how different disciplinary distance in interdisciplinary research contributes to reputational benefits of researchers. We find that for some types of collaboration, interdisciplinarity results in more highly cited research, while in others it is not, and look for explanations for this difference. Our results show that translational research draws higher citations when it involves university researchers from the most basic end of the disciplinary spectrum, and when its issues are directed at basic (rather than applied) research.

Keywords: Interdisciplinary research; Cognitive distance; Basic and applied science; Cost of learning; Translational research; 91C99; 62P20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I23 O30 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-015-1784-2 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:scient:v:106:y:2016:i:1:d:10.1007_s11192-015-1784-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-015-1784-2

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().