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The evolution of research collaboration within and across disciplines in Italian Academia

Author

Listed:
  • Elisa Bellotti

    (University of Manchester)

  • Luka Kronegger

    (University of Ljubljana)

  • Luigi Guadalupi

    (National Research Council (CNR))

Abstract

In sociology of science much attention is dedicated to the study of scientific networks, especially to co-authorship and citations in publications. Other trends of research have investigated the advantages, limits, performances and difficulties of interdisciplinary research, which is increasingly advocated by the main lines of public research funding. This paper explores the dynamics of interdisciplinary research in Italy over 10 years of scientific collaboration on research projects. Instead of looking at the output of research, i.e. publications, we analyse the original research proposals that have been funded by the Ministry of University and Research for a specific line of funding, the Research Projects of National Interest. In particular, we want to see how much interdisciplinary research has been conducted during the period under analysis and how changes in the overall amount of public funding might have affected disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration. We also want to cluster the similarities and differences of the amount of disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration across scientific disciplines, and see if it changes over time. Finally, we want to see if interdisciplinary projects receive an increasing share of funding compared to their disciplinary bounded counterparts. Our results indicate that while interdisciplinary research diminishes along the years, potentially responding to the contraction of public funding, research that cut across disciplinary boundaries overall receives more funding than research confined within disciplinary boundaries. Furthermore, the clustering procedure do not indicate clear and stable distinction between disciplines, but similar patterns of disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaboration are shown by discipline with common epistemological frameworks, which share compatible epistemologies of scientific investigations. We conclude by reflecting upon the implications of our findings for research policies and practices and by discussing future research in this area.

Suggested Citation

  • Elisa Bellotti & Luka Kronegger & Luigi Guadalupi, 2016. "The evolution of research collaboration within and across disciplines in Italian Academia," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 109(2), pages 783-811, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:109:y:2016:i:2:d:10.1007_s11192-016-2068-1
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-016-2068-1
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    4. Jing Li & Qian Yu, 2023. "The Evolutionary Characteristics and Interaction of Interdisciplinarity and Scientific Collaboration under the Convergence Paradigm: Analysis in the Field of Materials Genome Engineering," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-21, September.
    5. Oliver Wieczorek & Markus Eckl & Madeleine Bausch & Erik Radisch & Christoph Barmeyer & Malte Rehbein, 2021. "Better, Faster, Stronger: The Evolution of Co-authorship in International Management Research Between 1990 and 2016," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(4), pages 21582440211, November.
    6. Yu-Wei Chang, 2018. "Examining interdisciplinarity of library and information science (LIS) based on LIS articles contributed by non-LIS authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1589-1613, September.
    7. Aliakbar Akbaritabar & Vincent Antonio Traag & Alberto Caimo & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2020. "Italian sociologists: a community of disconnected groups," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 124(3), pages 2361-2382, September.
    8. Andrea Bonaccorsi & Nicola Melluso & Francesco Alessandro Massucci, 2022. "Exploring the antecedents of interdisciplinarity at the European Research Council: a topic modeling approach," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 127(12), pages 6961-6991, December.

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