Interdisciplinarity10
Most institutions do recognise the importance of interdisciplinarity in development
research, or at least that development issues need to be addressed beyond the boundaries of a single discipline. However, conducting interdisciplinary development research is
reported to be more demanding on institutions, particularly those which have
interdisciplinarity as an explicit ambition or priority or which regard interdisciplinarity as their comparative advantage. Such demands include:
Individual issues and the disciplinary backgrounds of individuals: Problems of motivation and personal ambition
Institutional or organisational requirements: Interdisciplinary research requires conscious and specific organisational arrangements, such as theme-based research groups
Aspects related to methodology: Difficulties in handling various methodologies and traditions
In one case, problems associated with interdisciplinarity had led to abandoning
interdisciplinarity as a stated ambition, and instead focused on “cross-disciplinarity”, e.g. the interaction/communication/collaboration across disciplines – but with more emphasis on interaction than close cooperation, such as in teams that conduct field work together. Generally, conducting interdisciplinary research is demanding in terms of time and other resources, and it requires a committed and devoted effort. In some cases, researchers may fear that their academic careers are at risk or more generally perceive that interdisciplinary research entails low professional recognition, but this was not seen as a widespread danger. When asked about the potential challenge of gaining acceptance from mainstream
disciplinary researchers, no general concern about being the “outsiders” appears, although some of the institutes voiced some frustration in this regard.
It was emphasised that interdisciplinarity builds on, rather than serves as a substitute for, solid disciplinary training/disciplinary backgrounds. A typical view within the academic institutions was that one should prevent development research from becoming separate from the traditional disciplines, which is also important from a methodological standpoint. It was noted that a sound disciplinary-based foundation remains a fundamental
precondition for sound participation in “multidisciplinary” research.
10
For the purposes of the present report, we have seen no reason to distinguish between different kinds of multi- and interdisciplinary research (nor do we have data for such distinctions), and the term
interdisciplinary research here denotes research activities that involve more than one discipline or to varying degrees transcend disciplinary boundaries. That is, research that in the literature may be defined
Cross-institutional collaboration
The units in this evaluation were also asked about cooperation between the universities, university colleges, and independent research institutes. It seems to be a common view that the research community is fragmented and consists of many small milieus. Moreover, there is a problematic relationship between strong, discipline-based milieus at the universities and the institute sector. One comment was that there are too many “one-man shows” (i.e. small research groups below the viability level) in too many different locations. At least the academic institutions felt that there was a need for more basic university research rather than applied research. It was also felt that the funding structure does not encourage
collaboration and that the research groups compete instead for the same pot of money. However, some also felt that such competition was positive and natural. There are some examples of functioning collaboration, e.g. in Bergen, but this is hard to replicate on a national basis. It was noted that it was easy to obtain network funding but difficult to obtain funding for joint projects. It was felt that it is of some importance to avoid overlap, but that international contacts are still more important than national collaboration.
When asked to list their research collaborators and competitors, a somewhat different picture emerged. Most of the academic units (higher education sector) report to have project collaboration or co-authorship with at least one independent institute, and most of the institutes report to have such collaboration with at least one academic unit. On average, the academic units report to collaborate with 1.9 domestic academic units and 1.3
institutes. The institutes, on the other hand, report to collaborate with 1.3 domestic academic units and 1.5 institutes.
When using other data sources, we find a notable amount of collaboration as well. Of the ISI-indexed articles within development research, 28 percent of the institute sector’s contributions are co-authored with universities, and 17 percent of the universities’ contributions are co-authored with the institute sector.11
This should indicate that the “sector divide” is not a major hindrance to collaboration. Nor does it seem to be an obstacle to competition. When listing their main competitors for research grants, qualified staff, commissioned research and consultancy work, the
academic units listed on average 1.8 academic units and 2 institutes. The institutes listed on average 1 academic unit and 2.2 institutes. (They could list up to five.) This should indicate that the competition is somewhat greater within the institute sector. On the other hand, competition does not seem to be a major, impenetrable obstacle to cooperation. Most of the
as multi-disciplinary, cross-disciplinary, inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary, is here all denoted interdisciplinary.
11
These also include some contributions from authors with institutional affiliations in both sectors. The correct notion would be: articles with an author address at a Norwegian higher education institution which also have one or more author-addresses at a Norwegian independent institute, and vice versa. Note that the figures include all “Norwegian” articles – regardless of whether or not an author at one of the research units selected for this evaluation contributed. For explication of the data, see Box 6.1 (Chapter 6).
respondents reported that they collaborate with their competitors. Only two units (both of them within the higher education sector) reported that they do not collaborate with any of their most important competitors. It should be noted, however, that only 14 of the 28 units answered the question about competitors.
It should also be noted that the general picture that emerges from the lists of collaborators is that Norwegian development research engages more often in international rather than domestic project collaboration (Section 3.3). On the other hand, very few respondents mentioned any foreign institutions when listing their five most important competitors – indicating that they mainly compete for domestic staff and domestically sponsored projects.