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Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Natural and Social Sciences - Status and Trends Exemplified in Groundwater Research.

ABSTRACT: Interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social sciences, is perceived as crucial to solving the significant challenges facing humanity. However, despite the need for such collaboration being expressed more frequently and intensely, it remains unclear to what degree such collaboration actually takes place, what trends and developments there are and which actors are involved. Previous studies, often based on bibliometric analysis of large bodies of literature, partly observed an increase in interdisciplinary collaboration in general, but in particular, the collaboration among distant fields was less explored. Other more qualitative studies found that interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social scientists was not well developed, and obstacles abounded. To shed some light on the actual status and developments of this collaboration, we performed an analysis based on a sample of articles on groundwater research. We first identified journals and articles therein that potentially combined natural and social science aspects of groundwater research. Next, we analysed the disciplinary composition of their authors' teams, cited references, titles and keywords, making use of our detailed personal expertise in groundwater research and its interdisciplinary aspects. We combined several indicators developed from this analysis into a final classification of the degree of multidisciplinarity of each article. Covering the period between 1990 and 2014, we found that the overall percentage of multidisciplinary articles was in the low single-digit range, with only slight increases over the past decades. The interdisciplinarity of individuals plays a major role compared to interdisciplinarity involving two or more researchers. If collaboration with natural sciences takes place, social science is represented most often by economists. As a side result, we found that journals publishing multidisciplinary research had lower impact factors on average, and multidisciplinary papers were cited much less than mono-disciplinary ones.

SUBMITTER: Barthel R

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5271333 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Natural and Social Sciences - Status and Trends Exemplified in Groundwater Research.

Barthel Roland R Seidl Roman R

PloS one 20170127 1

Interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social sciences, is perceived as crucial to solving the significant challenges facing humanity. However, despite the need for such collaboration being expressed more frequently and intensely, it remains unclear to what degree such collaboration actually takes place, what trends and developments there are and which actors are involved. Previous studies, often based on bibliometric analysis of large bodies of literature, partly obse ...[more]

PMID: 28129352

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Project description:BackgroundIn 1985 medical schools were integrated into the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education was created in Iran. Under this infrastructure education, research and service provision are unified, and it is expected that collaboration between researchers and decision makers become easier in such an integrated context.The question here is how the researchers behavior in the biggest medical university of the country towards collaboration is, i.e. how much do decision makers participate in different stages of research? Which factors affect it?MethodologyThe samples under study were all Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS) completed research projects that had gotten grants in 2004 and were over by the time this study was done. Two questionnaires were designed for this study: i) the research checklist which was filled for 301 projects, ii) the researcher's questionnaire, which was sent to principle investigators, 208 of which were collected. Multiple linear regression analysis was used for evaluating the potential factors affecting individuals 'collaboration score'.ResultsOnly 2.2 percent of TUMS' projects initiated in 2004 have had collaboration as a joint PI or co-investigator from non-academic organizations. The principle investigators mean collaboration score was 2.09, where 6 was the total score. So the collaboration score obtained was 35%. The 'type of research' had significant association with the collaboration score which is shown in the linear regression; collaboration was seen more in clinical (p = 0.007) and health system researches (p = 0.001) as compared to basic research.ConclusionThe present study shows that not many individuals collaborated as co-investigators from outside the university. This finding shows that research policy makers need to introduce interventions in this field. And assessment of barriers to collaboration and its facilitating factors should be considered in order to make it actually happen.

Project description:Micro- and macroparasites are a leading cause of mortality for humans, animals, and plants, and there is great need to understand their origins, transmission dynamics, and impacts. Disease ecology formed as an interdisciplinary field in the 1970s to fill this need and has recently rapidly grown in size and influence. Because interdisciplinary fields integrate diverse scientific expertise and training experiences, understanding their composition and research priorities is often difficult. Here, for the first time, we quantify the composition and educational experiences of a subset of disease ecology practitioners and identify topical trends in published research. We combined a large survey of self-declared disease ecologists with a literature synthesis involving machine-learning topic detection of over 18,500 disease ecology research articles. The number of graduate degrees earned by disease ecology practitioners has grown dramatically since the early 2000s. Similar to other science fields, we show that practitioners in disease ecology have diversified in the last decade in terms of gender identity and institution, with weaker diversification in race and ethnicity. Topic detection analysis revealed how the frequency of publications on certain topics has declined (e.g., HIV, serology), increased (e.g., the dilution effect, infectious disease in bats), remained relatively common (e.g., malaria ecology, influenza, vaccine research and development), or have consistently remained relatively infrequent (e.g., theoretical models, field experiments). Other topics, such as climate change, superspreading, emerging infectious diseases, and network analyses, have recently come to prominence. This study helps identify the major themes of disease ecology and demonstrates how publication frequency corresponds to emergent health and environmental threats. More broadly, our approach provides a framework to examine the composition and publication trends of other major research fields that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Project description:Background: Antimicrobial resistance is a serious public health problem that has become a global threat. Special attention should be given to polymyxins (polymyxin B and colistin) which, since their reintroduction into clinical practice, are considered "last resort" drugs. The objective of this study is to perform a bibliometric analysis of scientific research on polymyxin resistance. Methods: Scopus was used to retrieve documents relevant to polymyxin resistance from 2010 to 2019. Data was exported to Microsoft Excel for table presentation. SciVal was used for volume and citation analysis as well as collaboration patterns. Also, we extracted data regarding the top documents, authors, countries, institutions, and the metrics of journals. VantagePoint and VOSviewer were used for geographical distribution of worldwide research and keyword co-occurrence analysis, respectively. Results: A total of 1,409 documents were retrieved. The retrieved documents received 25.0 citations per document. Articles (73.88%) and letters (18.09%) were the most frequent types of documents. During 2010-2019, there was a significant growth in publications (p-value < 0.001). The received citations were 35,209 with a peak in 2016 (11,250 citations). China and the United States led the scientific production with 299 (21.2%) and 238 (16.9%) publications, respectively. Little or no contribution came from central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Chinese institutions have caused the greatest impact, with University of Zhejiang (China) being the most prolific institution on the subject (88 documents). In terms of the most productive journals, Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy ranked first with 196 (13.9%) documents. Most of the documents were published in quartile one journals and only had national collaboration (43.2%). Analysis of keyword co-occurrence revealed that research on polymyxin resistance during the last decade has focused on its relationship with public health, pharmacology, and genetics. Conclusion: The number of documents on polymyxin resistance has increased significantly in the recent years, with a steep growth from 2016 onwards. China and the United States led the scientific production. Most of the documents were published in high-quality journals. Greater joint efforts and more contribution from central Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America are still needed to tackle this global problem.

Dataset Information

Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Natural and Social Sciences - Status and Trends Exemplified in Groundwater Research.

Publications

Interdisciplinary Collaboration between Natural and Social Sciences - Status and Trends Exemplified in Groundwater Research.

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