The Challenge of Classifying 'Interdisciplinary Research': An Exploration

Equity and social justice, health and poverty, sustainable development, environmental management, global change-these represent some of the most pressing concerns of our times. Some of the key characteristics of these issues are that they are complex and multi-causal, requiring the integration of several different approaches, also referred to as 'interdisciplinary' work. However interdisciplinary research is increasingly difficult to identify in the digital era of online databases. The aim of the research reported here was to identify, compare and contrast interdisciplinary work across academic fields and disciplines by using sets of peer-reviewed academic publications that self-identified as 'interdisciplinary' in readily-available bibliographic databases. The research found that, as expected, the number of papers self-identifying as 'interdisciplinary' has grown over time and that there are differences by research field (social sciences, science, medicine, health). Within the social sciences, arts and humanities some disciplines (sociology, social work) have identified themselves as interdisciplinary over time at a greater rate than others (Film and Media, Drama). The findings suggest that some disciplines in social sciences, arts and humanities may have been better positioned to adopt and integrate the language of interdisciplinarily before others.

並列關鍵字

Arts ； science ； health ； Interdisciplinarily ； literature evaluation ； humanities ； multidisciplinary

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