Interdisciplinary research networks

Summary

Fields of Research are more often than not isolated from one another in terms of their community, jargon, perspective, research programme (in the sense of Lakatos) and their journals and lots more. This isolation stands in the way of a fruitful merging and interaction of fields. One needs to understand the obstructions.

Objectives

• To understand the factors that lead to interdisciplinary work
• To compare the success of interdisciplinary papers with single discipline papers
• To apply network methods to citation datasets
• To gain insight into how interdisciplinary research might be better supported

Members

Leo Horstmeyer (horstmey@mis.mpg.de )
Jennifer Hellmann
Anna Olson
Lin Li (linnlii2495 at gmail dot com)
Stefan Pfenninger
Catherine Bale

Methods

Datasets

arXiv

Data from 1991-2007
Includes: doi, journal_ref, primary_category, category, id, link, published, summary title, updated names
Info on metadata

APS

Data from 1893-2010
Includes: Authors, Affiliation, DOI, title,

Specific research questions

Static network:

Dynamical network:

General:

Q1. How can interdisciplinary work be supported? Q2. Do interdisciplinary paper take longer to review?

Analysis

- Someone of the other groups posted this python-based dynamic systems simulator : http://pycx.sourceforge.net/