Abstract Chatbots are increasingly becoming important gateways to digital services and information—taken up within domains such as customer service, health, education, work support. However, there is only limited knowledge concerning the impact of chatbots at individual, group, societal level. Furthermore, a number challenges remain be resolved before potential can fully realized. In response, ...

This special issue on community-based interdisciplinary research grew out of the work of the SCRA Interdisciplinary Task Force and an Interdisciplinary Working Conference held at Vanderbilt University in May, 2004. In this introduction to the special issue, the historical context for interdisciplinary underpinnings for community psychology theory, research, action and training is first depicted...

The purpose of this study was multifaceted: to initiate an interdisciplinary collaborative relationship between nursing and medical students; to determine the usefulness of an interdisciplinary approach using simulations as an educational strategy; and to analyze students' perceptions of collaboration. A pre/posttest design was used to assess students' perceptions of interdisciplinary collabora...

BACKGROUND Interdisciplinary health research is a priority of many funding agencies. We surveyed clinician and biomedical scientists about their views on the value and funding of interdisciplinary health research. METHODS We conducted semistructured interviews with 31 biomedical and 30 clinician scientists. The scientists were selected from the 2000-2006 membership lists of peer-review commit...

A new combined research-curriculum development (CRCD) program at Boston University titled Photonics Research in Interdisciplinary Education (PRIDE) is described. The PRIDE program is designed to demonstrate vertically integrated curriculum development by incorporating three levels of modules into a wide range of existing courses. Examples of photonics research and knowledge are molded into modu...

The complex challenges facing 21st century society will require solutions that transcend disciplinary boundaries (National Academies, 2004). The convergence of informatics, engineering and biotechnology is widely predicted to lie at the heart of the next technological revolution (Carlson, 2008). Interdisciplinary science and technology has the potential to fundamentally transform healthcare, ag...

This paper introduces “outside-in design” as a collaborative approach to social robot design and human-robot interaction research. As an interdisciplinary group of social and computer scientists, we follow an iterative practice of collecting and analyzing data from realworld interaction, designing appropriate robotic perception and control mechanisms, developing models of interaction through au...

The BIR workshop series foster the revitalisation of dormant links between two fields in information science: information retrieval and bibliometrics/scientometrics. Hopefully, tightening up these links will cross-fertilise both fields. I believe compelling research questions lie at the crossroads of scientometrics and other fields: not only information retrieval but also, for instance, psychol...