A measure of knowledge flow between specific fields: Implications of interdisciplinarity for impact and funding

Encouraging knowledge flow between mutually relevant disciplines is a worthy aim of research policy makers. Yet, it is less clear what types of research promote cross-disciplinary knowledge flow and whether such research generates particularly influential knowledge. Empirical questions remain as to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPloS one Vol. 12; no. 10; p. e0185583
Main Authors Kwon, Seokbeom, Solomon, Gregg E A, Youtie, Jan, Porter, Alan L
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States Public Library of Science 09.10.2017
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Subjects
Analysis
Bibliometrics
Biology and Life Sciences
Citations
Cognitive ability
Cognitive Science - trends
Criteria
Economic aspects
Education
Educational research
Financial Support
Flow
Funding
Humans
Information science
Interdisciplinary aspects
Interdisciplinary research
Interdisciplinary Studies
Journal Impact Factor
Knowledge
Learning
Library management
Peer Review, Research
Public policy
Research and Analysis Methods
Research funding
Science Policy
Scientometrics
Social Sciences
Society
Studies
Atlanta Georgia
United States > US
Georgia
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Summary:Encouraging knowledge flow between mutually relevant disciplines is a worthy aim of research policy makers. Yet, it is less clear what types of research promote cross-disciplinary knowledge flow and whether such research generates particularly influential knowledge. Empirical questions remain as to how to identify knowledge-flow mediating research and how to provide support for this research. This study contributes to addressing these gaps by proposing a new way to identify knowledge-flow mediating research at the individual research article level, instead of at more aggregated levels. We identify journal articles that link two mutually relevant disciplines in three ways-aggregating, bridging, and diffusing. We then examine the likelihood that these papers receive subsequent citations or have funding acknowledgments. Our case study of cognitive science and educational research knowledge flow suggests that articles that aggregate knowledge from multiple disciplines are cited significantly more often than are those whose references are drawn primarily from a single discipline. Interestingly, the articles that meet the criteria for being considered knowledge-flow mediators are less likely to reflect funding, based on reported acknowledgements, than were those that did not meet these criteria. Based on these findings, we draw implications for research policymakers.
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Competing Interests: As clearly indicated, Dr. Solomon is a collaborator on this research. He expressly distanced himself from any project management or oversight role in the project. That relationship has been vetted by NSF. One of the authors, Alan Porter, is jointly affiliated with Search Technology as Director of R&D, and also as Co-Director of the Program in Science, Technology & Innovation Policy at Georgia Tech. His salary for work on this project was paid by Search, from NSF funding. Search Technology, Inc. did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of the authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section. Search Technology develops and markets VantagePoint software [www.theVantagePoint.com] that was used to process the abstract records that constituted the data for the study. We do not perceive any competing interests relating to the study analyses or findings. Georgia Tech and Search Technology affiliations do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The abstract records themselves cannot be shared as they were obtained using Georgia Tech’s license from Clarivate Analytics to use Web of Science data for research purposes and not to redistribute those data. However, we provide specific details on how we searched for those data in Web of Science so that another person could recreate the dataset if they wished and had Web of Science access. We provide the search strategy in the Appendix section of the manuscript. There are not any patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0185583