Interdisciplinary research involves collaboration between researchers from different fields to solve complex problems that cannot be tackled within the confines of a single discipline. It seeks to combine knowledge, methods, and tools from different fields to create new solutions that are not possible within one field alone.
Interdisciplinary research can involve natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, as well as other areas such as engineering, computer science, and economics.
Dear Anis Hamza , you seem to have answered your question, you give a good definition of interdisciplinary research :)
I consider myself an interdisciplinary researcher and do enjoy interdisciplinary research. I enjoy mixing research areas from different fields and see the outcome/s. It allows for one to gain knowledge of other fields, whilst also adding your own perspectives to another field. Hence it becomes win-win situation. In addition, some problems cannot be solved from one area/field, but may require different knowledge from multiple research fields to reach a comprehensive solution. However, whilst I do interdisciplinary research, I am also cautious not to overstep boundaries on any specific field that may be totally out of my ambit/expertise.
Interdisciplinary research involves the application of ones specialty into other disciplines. As a researcher in Applied Computing, I find myself interacting with colleagues of other fields of research who may in some way need my expertise. In order to attend to them, I have to dig into their fields.
I found your question to be fascinating, along with the fact that ResearchGate has distinct 'communities' for inter-, multi- and trans-disciplinary research. Counting myself in the latter and leading a global initiative in this space, I found McPhee et al (2018) to offer an accessible and clear differentiation between the 3. We unpacked this for a general public audience here to explain what and why we were taking a transdisciplinary approach. https://www.unicef.org/innovation/innovation-nodes
Hope helpful / thought-provoking. Thanks for the good question.
Here is the McPhee DOIArticle Editorial: Transdisciplinary Innovation (August 2018)
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