Search

While bibliographic classifications are traditionally based on disciplines, the logical alternative is phenomenon‐based classification. Although not prevalent, this approach has been explored in the 20th century by J.D. Brown, the Classification Research Group, and others. Its principles have been stated in the León Manifesto (2007) and are currently represented by such general schemes as the Basic Concepts Classification and the Integrative Levels Classification. A phenomenon‐based classification lists classes of phenomena, including things and processes irrespective of the discipline studying them (which can optionally be specified as an additional facet). Facets can work in a phenomenon‐based system much as in a disciplinary one. This kind of system will promote the identification of potential relationships between research in different disciplines, and will especially benefit interdisciplinary work. The paper reviews the theory, history, structure, advantages, applications, and evaluation of phenomenon‐based classification systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of constructing science maps based on bibliographic data has intrigued researchers for decades, and various techniques have been developed to map the structure of research disciplines. Most science mapping studies use a single method. However, as research fields have various properties, a valid map of a field should actually be composed of a set of maps derived from a series of investigations using different methods. That leads to the question of what can be learned from a combination-triangulation-of these different science maps. In this paper we propose a method for triangulation, using the example of water science. We combine three different mapping approaches: journal-journal citation relations (JJCR), shared author keywords (SAK), and title word-cited reference co-occurrence (TWRC). Our results demonstrate that triangulation of JJCR, SAK, and TWRC produces a more comprehensive picture than each method applied individually. The outcomes from the three different approaches can be associated with each other and systematically interpreted to provide insights into the complex multidisciplinary structure of the field of water research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reports a longitudinal analysis of the topical and methodological development of Library and Information Science (LIS). Its focus is on the effects of researchers' disciplines on these developments. The study extends an earlier cross‐sectional study (Vakkari et al., Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022a, 73, 1706–1722) by a coordinated dataset representing a content analysis of articles published in 31 scholarly LIS journals in 1995, 2005, and 2015. It is novel in its coverage of authors' disciplines, topical and methodological aspects in a coordinated dataset spanning two decades thus allowing trend analysis. The findings include a shrinking trend in the share of LIS from 67 to 36% while Computer Science, and Business and Economics increase their share from 9 and 6% to 21 and 16%, respectively. The earlier cross‐sectional study (Vakkari et al., Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 2022a, 73, 1706–1722) for the year 2015 identified three topical clusters of LIS research, focusing on topical subfields, methodologies, and contributing disciplines. Correspondence analysis confirms their existence already in 1995 and traces their development through the decades. The contributing disciplines infuse their concepts, research questions, and approaches to LIS and may also subsume vital parts of LIS in their own structures of knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the interdisciplinary opportunities and challenges of working with digital cultural heritage, such as digitized historical newspapers, and proposes an integrated digital hermeneutics workflow to combine purely disciplinary research approaches from computer science, humanities, and library work. Common interests and motivations of the above‐mentioned disciplines have resulted in interdisciplinary projects and collaborations such as the NewsEye project, which is working on novel solutions on how digital heritage data is (re)searched, accessed, used, and analyzed. We argue that collaborations of different disciplines can benefit from a good understanding of the workflows and traditions of each of the disciplines involved but must find integrated approaches to successfully exploit the full potential of digitized sources. The paper is furthermore providing an insight into digital tools, methods, and hermeneutics in action, showing that integrated interdisciplinary research needs to build something in between the disciplines while respecting and understanding each other's expertise and expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research in information studies suggests that the tradition of seeing the discipline as weak is still alive and kicking. This is a problem because the discourse of the weak discipline creates conceptual confusion in relation to interdisciplinarity. Considering the growth of the iSchools and what is assumed to be a major institutional redrawing of boundaries, there is a pressing need to conceptualize interdisciplinary practices and boundary work. This paper explores the 'weak' discipline through a discourse analytical lens and identifies a myth. Perceiving the discipline as weak is part of a myth, fueled by the ideal of a unitary discipline; the ideal discipline has strong boundaries, and as long as the discourse continues to focus on a need for boundaries, the only available discourse is one that articulates the discipline as weak. Thus, the myth is a vicious circle that can be broken if weakness is no longer ascribed to the discipline by tradition. The paper offers an explanation of the workings of the myth so that its particular way of interpreting the world does not mislead us when theorizing interdisciplinarity. This is a conceptual paper, and the examples serve as an empirical backdrop to the conceptual argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding new ways to help researchers and administrators understand academic fields is an important task for information scientists. Given the importance of interdisciplinary research, it is essential to be aware of disciplinary differences in aspects of scholarship, such as the significance of recent changes in a field. This paper identifies potential changes in 25 subject categories through a term comparison of words in article titles, keywords and abstracts in 1 year compared to the previous 4 years. The scholarly influence of new research issues is indirectly assessed with a citation analysis of articles matching each trending term. While topic‐related words dominate the top terms, style, national focus, and language changes are also evident. Thus, as reflected in Scopus, fields evolve along multiple dimensions. Moreover, while articles exploiting new issues are usually more cited in some fields, such as Organic Chemistry, they are usually less cited in others, including History. The possible causes of new issues being less cited include externally driven temporary factors, such as disease outbreaks, and internally driven temporary decisions, such as a deliberate emphasis on a single topic (e.g., through a journal special issue). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) is a field of research concerned with studying how information and communication technologies (ICTs) can be used to improve the socio‐economic situation of marginalized communities in developing countries. The authors identify the preservation of the information provided or accessed during ICT4D projects as a critical gap in ICT4D research. They argue that archival science, an information discipline concerned with the preservation of recorded information, provides theories and models that can help make ICT4D projects more sustainable. They discuss the creation of analog backups by participants in an ICT4D project in Bangladesh as an example of communities taking the initiative to remedy the limitations of an ICT4D project with simple pen and paper technology to preserve the information they wanted to keep. Conversely, they argue that insights on how marginalized communities interact with and preserve information gained through ICT4D projects can enrich archival science and foster the development of more inclusive theories and practices. Finally, they suggest areas for interdisciplinary research between ICT4D and archival science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdisciplinary research is widely recognized as necessary to tackle some of the grand challenges facing humanity. It is generally believed that interdisciplinarity is becoming increasingly prevalent among Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields. However, little is known about the evolution of interdisciplinarity in the Social Sciences. Also, how interdisciplinarity and its various aspects evolve over time has seldom been closely quantified and delineated. This paper answers these questions by capturing the disciplinary diversity of the knowledge base of scientific publications in nine broad Social Sciences fields over 55 years. The analysis considers diversity as a whole and its three distinct aspects, namely variety, balance, and disparity. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions are also conducted to investigate whether such change, if any, can be found among research with similar characteristics. We find that learning widely and digging deeply have become one of the norms among researchers in Social Sciences. Fields acting as knowledge exporters or independent domains maintain a relatively stable homogeneity in their knowledge base while the knowledge base of importer disciplines evolves towards greater heterogeneity. However, the increase of interdisciplinarity is substantially smaller when controlling for several author and publication related variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovations transform our research traditions and become the driving force to advance individual, group, and social creativity. Meanwhile, interdisciplinary research is increasingly being promoted as a route to advance the complex challenges we face as a society. In this paper, we use Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) citation as a proxy context for the diffusion of an innovation. With an analysis of topic evolution, we divide the diffusion process into five stages: testing and evaluation, implementation, improvement, extending, and fading. Through a correlation analysis of topic and subject, we show the application of LDA in different subjects. We also reveal the cross‐boundary diffusion between different subjects based on the analysis of the interdisciplinary studies. The results show that as LDA is transferred into different areas, the adoption of each subject is relatively adjacent to those with similar research interests. Our findings further support researchers' understanding of the impact formation of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientometrics has many citation‐based measurements for characterizing diversity, but most of these measurements depend on human‐designed categories and the granularity of discipline classifications sometimes does not allow in‐depth analysis. As such, the current paper proposes a new measurement for quantifying journals' diversity by utilizing the abstracts of scientific publications in journals, namely topic diversity (TD). Specifically, we apply a topic detection method to extract fine‐grained topics, rather than disciplines, in journals and adapt certain diversity indicators to calculate TD. Since TD only needs as inputs abstracts of publications rather than citing relationships between publications, this measurement has the potential to be widely used in scientometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information studies have identified numerous needs and barriers to the integration of asylum seekers and refugees; however, little emphasis has been placed thus far on their need to keep their own culture, values, and traditions alive. In this work, we use ethnographic constructivist grounded theory to explore the place of heritage in the information experience of people who have sought asylum in the United Kingdom. Based on our findings, we propose to conceptualize heritage as an affective and meaningful information literacy practice. Such conceptualization fosters integration by allowing people to simultaneously maintain their own ways of knowing and adapt to local ones. Our research approach provides scholars with a conceptual tool to holistically explore affective, meaningful, and cultural information practices. This study also reveals implications for policymakers, third sector organizations, and cultural institutions working toward the more sustainable integration of asylum seekers and refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at 10 years of reviews in a multidisciplinary journal, The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), which is the flagship journal of social simulation. We measured referee behavior and referees' agreement. We found that the disciplinary background and the academic status of the referee have an influence on the report time, the type of recommendation and the acceptance of the reviewing task. Referees from the humanities tend to be more generous in their recommendations than other referees, especially economists and environmental scientists. Second, we found that senior researchers are harsher in their judgments than junior researchers, and the latter accept requests to review more often and are faster in reporting. Finally, we found that articles that had been refereed and recommended for publication by a multidisciplinary set of referees were subsequently more likely to receive citations than those that had been reviewed by referees from the same discipline. Our results show that common standards of evaluation can be established even in multidisciplinary communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impact is embedded in today's research culture, with increasing importance being placed on the value of research to society. In interdisciplinary and cross-sector projects, team members may hold distinct views on the types of impact they want to create. Set in the context of an interdisciplinary, cross-sector project comprised of partners from academia, industry, and the nonprofit sector, our paper unpacks how these diverse project members understand impact. Our analysis shows that interdisciplinary projects offer a unique opportunity to create impact on a number of different levels. Moreover, it demonstrates that a lack of accountable design and collaboration practices can potentially hinder pathways to impact. Finally, we find that the interdisciplinary perspectives that such projects introduce encourage a rich gamut of sustainable outcomes that go beyond commercialization. Our findings support researchers working in these complex contexts to appreciate the opportunities and challenges involved in interdisciplinary cross-sector research contexts while imparting them with strategies for overcoming these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 5‐year project to study scientific data uses in geography, starting in 1999, evolved into 20 years of research on data practices in sensor networks, environmental sciences, biology, seismology, undersea science, biomedicine, astronomy, and other fields. By emulating the "team science" approaches of the scientists studied, the UCLA Center for Knowledge Infrastructures accumulated a comprehensive collection of qualitative data about how scientists generate, manage, use, and reuse data across domains. Building upon Paul N. Edwards's model of "making global data"—collecting signals via consistent methods, technologies, and policies—to "make data global"—comparing and integrating those data, the research team has managed and exploited these data as a collaborative resource. This article reflects on the social, technical, organizational, economic, and policy challenges the team has encountered in creating new knowledge from data old and new. We reflect on continuity over generations of students and staff, transitions between grants, transfer of legacy data between software tools, research methods, and the role of professional data managers in the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite interdisciplinary research playing a pivotal role in modern science, interdisciplinary research proposals appear to have a lower chance of being funded. Scholars suggested that interdisciplinary research may be disadvantaged in the evaluation and should be earmarked specific resources and evaluated by specific panels. However, empirical evidence is limited regarding the conditions under which interdisciplinary proposals are disadvantaged. We explore this issue in the context of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) research funding framework, which, contrary to the common practice, does not organize the evaluation process around disciplinary panels, but with a panel‐free system. The sample includes data from five calls, from March 2015 to September 2017, for a total of 1,928 proposals, and 5,330 evaluations conducted by 3,050 reviewers. We find that the effect of a proposal's degree of interdisciplinarity is negligible and not significant. We found no variation in this result across scientific fields and disciplinary expertise of reviewers, and no evidence of disciplinary "turf wars." These results suggest that factors assumed to disadvantage interdisciplinary proposals, such as being inherently more challenging to be evaluated and being riskier, are less problematic when the evaluation is not organized around disciplinary panels but rather with a panel‐free system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change as a complex physical and social issue has gained increasing attention in the natural as well as the social sciences. Climate change research has become more interdisciplinary and even transdisciplinary as a typical Mode-2 science that is also dependent on an application context for its further development. We propose to approach interdisciplinarity as a co-construction of the knowledge base in the reference patterns and the programmatic focus in the editorials in the core journal of the climate-change sciences- C limatic C hange-during the period 1977-2013. First, we analyze the knowledge base of the journal and map journal-journal relations on the basis of the references in the articles. Second, we follow the development of the programmatic focus by analyzing the semantics in the editorials. We argue that interdisciplinarity is a result of the co-construction between different agendas: The selection of publications into the knowledge base of the journal, and the adjustment of the programmatic focus to the political context in the editorials. Our results show a widening of the knowledge base from referencing the multidisciplinary journals N ature and S cience to citing journals from specialist fields. The programmatic focus follows policy-oriented issues and incorporates public metaphors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the referencing patterns in articles in Cognitive Science over three decades, we analyze the knowledge base of this literature in terms of its changing disciplinary composition. Three periods are distinguished: (A) construction of the interdisciplinary space in the 1980s, (B) development of an interdisciplinary orientation in the 1990s, and (C) reintegration into 'cognitive psychology' in the 2000s. The fluidity and fuzziness of the interdisciplinary delineations in the different visualizations can be reduced and clarified using factor analysis. We also explore newly available routines (' CorText') to analyze this development in terms of 'tubes' using an alluvial map and compare the results with an animation (using 'Visone'). The historical specificity of this development can be compared with the development of 'artificial intelligence' into an integrated specialty during this same period. Interdisciplinarity should be defined differently at the level of journals and of specialties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]