Measurement and evaluation of interdisciplinary research and knowledge transfer

Abstract

Interdisciplinarity of research is a hot topic because of new developments occurring at frontiers of disciplines (e.g. nanoscience), but also because of the urge for societal relevance of research. A lot has been written on interdisciplinarity, however, relatively little empirical research has been carried out. In this thesis the value of quantitative, in particular bibliometric methods in research on interdisciplinarity is investigated and these methods are applied in a number of case studies. Methods are applied in three ways: in order to determine the interdisciplinary character of research; to validate evaluation processes in science, in particular with respect to interdisciplinary research; and to investigate knowledge flows between disciplines. The results show that bibliometric outcomes can offer a test, but also may offer additional information for peer review procedures in science. It also appears that the assumption that peer review is biased in case of interdisciplinary research, is not universally true. An analysis, with the aid of bibliometric methods, of the outcomes of a nation wide research assessment of physics showed no bias in peer review judgements in case of interdisciplinary research programs. In this study a more clear distinction is advocated between interdisciplinarity and societal relevance of research, and furthermore between top down stimulation and bottom up development of interdisciplinarity. This distinction helps to gain more insight into contributions to interdisciplinary developments from within basic research in disciplines. Citation analysis gives indications for the significance of such processes. E.g. citation analysis shows a relatively large knowledge flow from disciplines like basic life sciences and physics to other disciplines.