It depends on the funding agency. For example, as a Canadian, I seek funding from an agency called NSERC, and searching on "NSERC interdisciplinary" yields, among other things, the informative document at http://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/nserc-crsng/policies-politiques/prepinterdiscip-prepinterdiscip_eng.asp

Thanks for sharing this elaborate guideline. Considering the tone there I'd say they foster interdisciplinary (or multidisciplinary) research.

I completed my PhD last year looking at health researchers experience of doing interdisciplinary research or being interdisciplinary in the higher education sector. Essentially, a key finding was that researchers had a conflicted experience of interdisciplinary research (or interdisciplinarity) - it was experienced on one hand as enabling the self, but also as disabling the self as a researcher. The experience of interdisciplinarity as disabling was related to the dominance of normative frameworks for research inquiry and identity in the higher education sector which tend to privileged discipline-based views and values (including in relation to funding, reward and recognition, peer review etc).

A quick scan of (our) national and other guidelines for research assessment and funding schemes confirms this - there is very little detail about how interdisciplinary research proposals (i.e. proposals that straddle multiple Field of Research) are reviewed and what internal or external expertise is utilised to assist discipline panels in assessing interdisciplinary work. Often, little detail is given about how the results of multiple discipline-based reviews are integrated. This clearly illustrates the added level of scrutiny that interdisciplinary research is subject to in the research evaluation/ assessment process, the lack of clarity about the process, and the lack of parity in the methods used to evaluate discipline-specific vs. interdisciplinary research.

Thanks for sharing this summary, Koshila. I am wondering what a study of guidelines at an international level would result in, but your observations don't sound too encouraging.

Assessment of interdisciplinary work should be of interest to Horizon 2020 in Europe. This is meant as an example of international research cooperation. Would be nice to hear about other international channels.

In Estonia, when you apply for funding, you have to select one of 4 areas - Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities and Medicine - to indicate which sub-committee will give a recommendation to the committee if it should fund your proposal or not. As some of these fields are very wide, many applicants are not happy that all sub-committee members are not very familiar their field. So, people conducting interdisciplinary research within one of the 4 fields may even have an advantage. Some people also conduct research on 2 of these field simultaneously, but still, 1 of these sub-committees makes the intitial decision and then a joint committee decides if they will get the grant.

@Sylvia, thanks for mentioning the Horizon 2020 Programme, where I found the following interesting statement made by the ERC (European Research Council).

"The ERC puts particular emphasis on the frontiers of science, scholarship and engineering. In particular, it encourages proposals of an interdisciplinary nature which cross the boundaries between different fields of research, pioneering proposals addressing new and emerging fields of research or proposals introducing unconventional, innovative approaches and scientific inventions." (see link below)

European and Canadian (cf. Dan's post 21 days ago [from today]) funding agencies seem to encourage and foster interdisciplinary research, good news. For Australia (as Koshila said) there is not much encouragement, so far.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/horizon2020/pdf/work-programmes/european_research_council_draft_work_programme.pdf#view=fit&pagemode=none

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that some of the programs under Horizon 2020 are open for participants from countries outside EU. I remember a particular project involving researches from Germany, UK, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Michael, I cannot recall many details but I am quite certain that USM from Penang was taking part in that project.

@Sylvia, I know. All programs funded by EU organizations need a leading EU institution, though, right? So, we (here from Thailand) cannot apply directly for EU funds, AFAIK.

@Sylvia , @Michael , here is the first-hand-link and explanations on HORIZON 2020 rules!

http://wbc-inco.net/object/news/10825

Also, I do find this link helpful on HORIZON 2020! Regards! @Michael, sorry, did not see Your link above, but only Your answer to Sylvia!

http://wbc-inco.net/object/link/9611

@Michael, you are absolutely right about the application rules for EU projects, i.e Horizon 2020. At the same time it is possible to express willingness to participate in such projects. I can find the link later on and posted it, if that is of interest.

@Ljubomir, thanks for the links.

@Sylvia, @Ljubomir, thanks for your help. I really appreciate your input.

@Michael, here is link 'Horizon 2020 Partner Finder'

http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Horizon-2020-Partner-Finder-4783146

It is not exactly what I have had in mind. The link that I have been using

before has disappeared.

How about bilateral agreements? Sometimes it is not too difficult to get it.

@Sylvia, with bilateral agreement you mean an MOU with a European university?

Michael: in direct response to your question, it is my understanding that funding agencies have been major actors in promoting interdiscipinary research in several fields, such as education, health, environment, technological development, technological use, and several others.

For those interested in these issues, it seems that promoting interdisciplinarity has been a major policy issue in the OECD at least since the 1970 (see, for example, OECD (1972) Interdisciplinarity: Problems of Teaching and Research in Universities. Paris: OECD; and OECD (1982) The University and the Community: The Problems of Changing Relationships. Paris: OECD). One might postulate that funding agencies have taken part both in the formulation and in carrying out such policies. As a side comment, let me mention that OECD and European programmatic and funding policies as those mentioned above are considered examplary here in Brazil.

PS: the importance of interdisciplinarity for funding agencies can be recognized in the recorrent claims to have appropriate evaluation means for interdisciplinary research (e.g. Klein 2008 doi:10.1016/j.amepre.2008.05.010).

@Michael, by a bilateral agreement I ment an agreement between two countries for supporting joint research within some areas. I have seen one between Thailand and Norway in health education. Norway has bilateral agreements with countries from different continents.

Funding organizations can be and are often are a force for interdisciplinary efforts. However, scientists as reviewers find is generally easier to understand and be enthusiastic about proposals that are less complex and less multidisciplinary in my experience. Most reviewers do not do multi-disciplinary work and few understand or appreciate it at a deep level. Most reviewers are professors who have many responsibilities besides research and thus cannot master more than a limited set of disciplines. A proposal on a single well-known problem employing a single method can be understood and appreciated if it is of high quality by most reviewers. These projects largely get the best scores. With funding so limited as is now the case, only the best scores are supported. If reviewers get confused by a multidisciplinary proposal, then they assume the applicant is being confusing. Explaining multiple techniques and their importance and limitations in a limited space is hard, as reviewers may lack the broad background to appreciate more than a few methods. The applicant doing multidisciplinary work almost has to guess what the reviewers may be thinking when they do their review, as no proposal gives applicants enough space to throughly address every issue at the same level. Even when reviewers see the value and creativity in a multidisciplinary proposal they will likely find something they question and thus the score will not be as high as for a simpler proposal where everything can be covered more thoroughly. So the review process is a block to multidisciplinary work.

You've introduced a very interesting point, John. And it leads to another construction site for improving the academic review process, it seems, which many complain about here in different threads.

I could not agree more, John. Researches often assume that an excellent idea speaks by itself and the significance of what they see is clear to everybody. The

art to convince others, in our case reviews, is another matter.

HORIZON 2020 just been approved by European Parliament!

http://wbc-inco.net/object/news/13333

I always tell my students :

*** The more collaboration we have, the less competition we will have :)

*** single-discipline research is totally fine, and will produce great results and will continue to do so. But, multi-disciplinary research always creates more exciting stuff.

*** I believe that, if something is easy, a lot of people will do it. Not to mean that, mono-disciplinary research is easy ... But, there is a lot less unchartered territory left in mono-disciplinary research ...

*** On the other hand, multi-disciplinary research is 2x, 4x, 8x more challenging, but, it is open to a lot more exciting results ... I tend to go out of my way to collaborate with medical folks, and Computer Science (I am ECE).

*** One recent project I am working on involves Homomorphic encryption of medical data in the cloud, to enable privacy-preserving computation. I am the PI doing the cloud computing (and in general, computing) . Homomorphic encryption is the deepest cryptography you can get yourself into: so, we have a collaborator from the CS department, who is an expert in cryptography. Our meetings include seeing our cardio surgeon at the medical center inside the room with all medical equipment ... and at the same time, getting into deep Number theory discussions for the homomorphic part. Not to mention the fancy GPUs that I use for cloud accelerators.

*** When it comes to understanding the ECG, cardiology, and medical part, in general, I spent a lot of time to get to a point, when I am not CLUELESS when talking to our M.D. collaborator !!! Similarly, I had to bring this concept to the medical center, and everybody had to digest it and I introduced them the computational part.

*** In summary, we spent 6 months just to start talking a language that everybody can tune into. What is the end result ? A research that could revolutionize the medical field ! Ok, sorry, I just get excited about my research :)

*** Our funding application is a recent solicitation by the US government (NSF/NIH combo) which clearly understands the DIRE need for multi-disciplinary research. It is 10x more difficult, and 50x more exciting !

Tolga makes good points. More collaborators can be great in terms of impact, but as he notes, they do take lots of time and sustained effort. A practical issue is that for funding agencies anyone who is a collaborator cannot be a reviewer and sometimes members of their institute cannot be reviewers, so leave some experts out there who can critically appreciate the work.

Very useful feedback, Tolga, as usual. And, I can feel your excitement between the lines. From the responses up to now I can see that multi/interdisciplinary projects is clearly fostered by agencies in developed countries; on the other hand, for upcoming countries the picture is somewhat blurred. I was hoping for some input from researchers interested in this kind of projects.

John, let me elaborate on your comment about "reviewers" ...

You are absolutely right about how difficult the review process is, when it comes to multi-disciplinary work ... I am going through one now . Although the government clearly recognizes the importance of multi-disciplinary work, it is very challenging to evaluate a research proposal in a holistic fashion, since it is extremely difficult to find reviewers that are experts in more than one topic. The general review process is to individually review a proposal, and sum up the pieces, i.e., use the 1+1+1=3 formula, where 1s are the reviews of individual fields, and 3 is the joint review of a 3-discipline research. This formula clearly DOESN'T WORK !!! 1+1+1 is usually 1, or 4, or 0 !!! I can give you cases for all of these !!! ...

This means that, the review of somebody specialized in field 1 + a separate review of somebody specializing in field 2 plus another one in field 3 doesn't assess how good the proposal is in a HOLISTIC fashion. Also, it is possible that, 0.5+0.5+0.5=3. I mean, the proposal might not be adding too much to any one of the fields (if any), which will get bad reviews from each reviewer, but, the combination of the three fields might produce a revolutionary research outcome. This INTEGRATION VALUE is very difficult to assess, unless every reviewer knows something about every field.

This is just one of the challenges the research funding agencies have ... Just to give you an idea about how much of a problem this is, the current solicitation by NSF/NIH had hang-ups due to the COMPLEXITY OF THE PROPOSALS THAT WERE SUBMITTED. Researchers that submitted proposals are currently on hold for certain proposals that are too difficult to evaluate !!!

In my experience, funding agencies may often appear hostage of the individual influence that some (senior) scientists have in the definition and, later, in the evaluation of interdisciplinary programs; some of my colleagues think this is the most common situation.

My experience also shows that funding agencies can be real protagonists in the definition of the broad research content, organization and evaluation of their programs, in particular, if conflicts between major players (i.e. senior scientists) are too evident, if they go against agencies' policies and interests, and if their programs are MATURE ENOUGH to have clear methodological solutions to overcome major programmatic difficulties (here it seems to have examples of positive feedback when the entire field receives programatic incentives and collaborates towards a more mature state of affairs, which in turn helps the outline and then consolidation of an interdisciplinary program).

My experience suggests also that there are successful cases of protagonism from the part of a funding agencies only in multidisiplinary programs, in interdisciplinary programs for which integrative resources were mature enough to propiciate disciplinary integration, and, of course, in cases when dominance from the part of one discipline reduces the possibilities of protagonism from other disciplines, and facilitates disciplinary articulation. I know of no cases of transdisciplinary progress resulting from deliberate policy making, and will appreciate if anyone would share examples of such research.

PS I hope this message is not too cryptic ... sorry if that is the case

@Diogenes, here is how it works in the US ...

***1*** A set of "big shots" propose what they think is important for our science, education, economy etc ... The government already has an agenda to pursue. They refine their agenda based on these additional recommendations ...

***2*** This allows the government to set a list of goals to achieve in the following year, as far as research ... For example, fuel cells, solar energy, Big Data, etc ...

***3*** This , combined with the TOTAL RESEARCH BUDGET gets broken down to funding agencies' individual budgets, such as, NSF, NIH ...

***4*** These agencies, then, come up with SOLICITATIONS that reflect the goals that were determined in Step ***1***

***5*** It is possible that, the funding agencies get some unexpected results, such as, the difficulty in reviewing certain proposals. This reason this happens is, since the big shots in Step ***1*** did not expect the difficulty for the government to evaluate these proposals.

If a certain type of solicitation proves to be too challenging, the government gains experience in it, and comes up with similar solicitations CAUTIOUSLY next time round ... Completely shying away from challenging multi-disciplinary proposals is a VERY BAD idea, since, nothing that is worth pursuing is without challenges. You just have to keep trying ... until you tweak the formula to the point, where it works ...

@Michael, I find this information appropriate for Your thread! It might be helpfull to some of us. Link follows!

http://wbc-inco.net/object/news/13356

Yes, Ljubomir, I have seen your fine thread on Horizon2020, which is important. Research groups outside Euopean and US/Canadian (Australian/SA?) sphere have to keep up their efforts to cope with it. Thanks for sharing!

@Michael, my thread on HORIZON2020 was removed/ deleted by an editor!!! I was unpleasantly surprised! Beyond, I thought that researchers from all over the world could apply for expert position! Regards!

@Michael, could Horizon 2020 event in Bangkok, 21-23.01.2014 be of interest?

http://www.stidays.net/?page_id=278

Yes, Sylvia, it's on my list. Thanks for mentioning this.

Michael, as you already know Horizon 2020 proposals have to involve many partners from different countries. Du you know any other universities who would be interested to participate in projects supported by Horizon 2020? It is not clear who can initiate a proposal, apart from EU member countries, but to be a partner is already quite good.

I am one of those who would gladly be a partner and take a project coordination job as a second choice.

@Sylvia, as being staffed at a Norwegian institution you are not entitled to start a project without partners from the EU, right? Neither are we, of course. I'll try to connect to interested partners on the occasion in January. Let's see what happens.

@Michael, any member of Norwegian institutions can start (at EU it was 'initiate') a project. Norway is one of the few other countries outside EU with full rights as far as EU projects are concerned.

The organizations do encourage the interdisciplinary research

OK, good to know that, Sylvia.

A national infrastructure for research data is necessary to effectively apply AI and machine learning...

Research funding is still presented in a siloed ways and we need to look at how we can break down those barriers. An example of where that is working well is the Big Data Network. Since 2013, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has invested over £64 million in this project bringing together data that helps to inform government policy makers. The Big Data Network connects comprehensive data on people, their behaviours, their attitudes and their motivations at the national level. All scientists require this national research data infrastructure to capture, store, process and access data to enable collaboration across all disciplines...

It is the art of the possible. I believe this this piece of infrastructure will allow us to lay down a more coherent capability across the academic landscape. I genuinely think that it will allow us to continue to compete on the global academic stage...

https://www.researchinformation.info/analysis-opinion/art-possible?utm_source=Adestra&utm_medium=email&utm_content=The%20art%20of%20the%20possible&utm_campaign=RI%20Newsline%20July%202021&utm_term=Research%20Information

The more interdisciplinary research is, the more it is used in policy documents

"Interdisciplinary research is increasingly seen as a solution to today’s complex scientific and social problems. In recent decades, governments and public funding agencies have frequently required scientists at universities and public research institutions to demonstrate the scientific and social impact of funded research. Many studies have explored how interdisciplinary research, which combines different areas of knowledge, encourages unique ideas, and leads to major scientific breakthroughs, attracts attention from the scientific community and society. However, it’s still unclear the extent to which this type of research is noticed by policy-makers. Our study aimed to find out if interdisciplinary research gets more attention from policy documents compared to research focused on a single discipline. In short, we found that interdisciplinary research is more likely to attract attention in policy documents and hence we argue is more likely to influence policy-making...

Our findings indicate that there is a positive correlation between the interdisciplinarity of scientific publications and the attention they receive from policy documents in almost all fields. More specifically, the stronger the interdisciplinarity of scientific publication, the greater its ability to attract attention from policy documents. In simpler terms, interdisciplinarity plays a role in facilitating the translation of scientific research into tangible policy outcomes, which provides useful insights for researchers and policymakers..."

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2024/09/30/the-more-interdisciplinary-research-is-the-more-it-is-used-in-policy-documents/