– This essay was written in response to an invitation by the editors of NSS issued after the author had reviewed the paper entitled " Methodological challenges of trans-disciplinary research " submitted by Christian Pohl and Gertrude Hirsch-Hadorn (see Pohl and Hirsch Hadorn, 2008). The essay provides an accounting for the transformation in my emotioning as I read the submitted paper by introdu...

Introduction If 'sustainability' is an icon of environmentalists in southern Africa, so too is 'integration' for scientists drawn into this arena. Scientists seem to be less capable than their compatriots, however, at substantiating their ideals. Popular environmentalism thrives on various forms of civic pressure on government and industry to 'clean up their acts'. Conservation agencies can sho...

Abstract Although funding is essential for some types of research and beneficial others, it may constrain academic choice creativity. Thus, important to check whether ever seems unnecessary. Here we investigate funded U.K. tends be higher quality in all fields major funders. Based on peer review scores 113,877 articles from the U.K.’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021, estimate that ther...

Most commentaries welcomed an evolutionary genetic approach to personality, but several raised concerns about our integrative model. In response, we clarify the scientific status of evolutionary genetic theory and explain the plausibility and value of our evolutionary genetic model of personality, despite some shortcomings with the currently available theories and data. We also have a closer lo...

In a plenary talk at WMSCI 2012 entitled “Planning for Action Research: Looking at Practice through a Different Lens,” this author asserted that behavioral science practitioners, often “back into” action research – they start out doing a process improvement or intervention and discover something along the way, i.e., generalizable knowledge, that seems worthwhile to share with their community of...

introduction How genre is understood and configured in analyses of disciplinary texts and discourses is key to understanding the nature of student work in the disciplines. The question of genre is also intimately linked to what we know about expert texts in a discipline. These relationships have been studied for some time in France, first through traditional-formalist frames of text types and m...

A s Ph.D. students, and then as postdoctoral associates, future academicians spend 6–8 years getting ready to push hard on the boundaries and interfaces where traditional areas of science overlap. More than ever, however, this broadens the separation between what that faculty member is prepared to carry out in the laboratory and what is expected from a professor in the undergraduate teaching pr...

This paper examines the evolution of organisational structures supporting the IT disciplines at a sample group of Australian universities. The paper draws on sociological theory to suggest that there is strong two-way inter-connection between organizational structure and disciplinary structure within universities. It argues that the debate and discussion about the definition of disciplinary bou...

More than a decade and a half ago, Susan Miller argued in Textual Carnivals that, in focusing its disciplinary research questions on process, composition has diverted attention away from the politics that contribute to a text’s social and political reception and consequences. In shaping a disciplinary research agenda around the notion that anyone can write, composition has rendered unnecessary ...