Interdisciplinarity as a multidimensional concept: Its measure in three different research areas

Interdisciplinarity is analyzed in three different research areas: Pharmacology & Pharmacy, Cardiovascular System and Materials Science, by means of data collected from a survey to Spanish scientists. The study focuses on three different and complementary dimensions. First, diversity in personal training and research specialization of scientists is analyzed both in the field and within the research teams. Secondly, research practices and behavior of the groups are considered, taking into account the use of cross-disciplinary knowledge or techniques and the collaboration with scientists from other disciplines. The third dimension refers to the cognitive inputs and outputs of the research activity and focuses on the diversity of subjects of the journals used for publication and for reference by the research teams. Interdisciplinarity emerges in research areas as a double edge process: either as a process of jumping into a new area with people of different disciplines, in coherence with the traditional disciplinary research teams, or as a process of specialization in field traditionally dominated by a single group of disciplinary backgrounds, in which researchers from different areas join the research teams. Thus specialization-fragmentation-hybridization come all-together.