While global universities seem to show a strong appreciation of the need to break down scientific disciplinary barriers to find the next scientific breakthroughs, new research has uncovered a significant gap between this rhetoric and reality of supporting the power of interdisciplinary science.
Times Higher Education (THE) and Schmidt Science Fellows’ preliminary, consultative white paper, ‘Interdisciplinary Science Ranking: preliminary analysis’, finds universities in China, Hong Kong, India and Singapore are supporting interdisciplinary science better than more traditional research hubs such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
The preliminary research is based on a range of metrics including: admin support, measure of success, tenure or promotion and physical facilities, which are designed to understand the depth and quality of interdisciplinary science at universities and the environment to encourage such work.
Highlights from the analysis of 710 universities, which provided valid data, from 100 countries/regions includes:
- Universities in Hong Kong and Singapore are performing the best in the world for the number and quality of interdisciplinary science research (ISR) publications and they are also by far and away the best places for ISR publication productivity (proportion of ISR publications compared with overall research publications)
- Universities in China and India are showing a lot of ISR publications
- Universities in Asia, led by India, then Pakistan and followed by Turkey submitted the most data on their practices in interdisciplinary science, posted the most advertisements for ISR jobs and demonstrated the highest levels of income dedicated to ISR
- Egyptian universities, on average, have the highest proportion of research income dedicated to ISR, the second highest is Uzbekistan and the third highest is Saudi Arabia.
A significant amount of the data submitted was not relevant meaning a university was not able to provide evidence of interdisciplinary science research (ISR). This was most notable in ISR tenure promotion where 91.6% of the data was not relevant and of that only 4.09% showed specific evidence, the other 4.32% was generic. In measuring ISR success 74% of the information was not relevant and in measuring ISR administrative support 66.8% of the data was not relevant. Universities did best in providing evidence of dedicated physical facilities for ISR, with 31% providing specific evidence and 16% providing generic evidence but even here more than 52% of universities could not provide relevant evidence.
Where there was specific evidence, universities in India excelled in all four ISR categories: admin support, measuring success, physical facilities and tenure promotion. Universities in Japan came second in two categories: admin support and physical facilities and Italian universities came third in those two categories.
THE and Schmidt Science Fellows are now consulting with the global university and higher education sector to refine the metrics used this year and ways to facilitate greater engagement with an aspiration to publish a full Interdisciplinary Science Ranking in 2024.
The research uncovers good practice in institutions that have previously not been visible and highlights a number of universities that perform well for interdisciplinary science beyond the more traditional household name names including:
- Lancaster University (UK): interdisciplinary science is a high priority for the university and outlines several new institutes including one in data science, one working with government and industry on national security research, a materials science institute, and an interdisciplinary centre for global eco-education, among others.
- Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Germany): appears to have 16 interdisciplinary centres including one on mobility and energy, applied computer science, health economics and health services, pure and applied mass spectrometry
- Duy Tan University (Vietnam): has over 50 international partnerships with universities to conduct research including: Carnegie Mellon University on software engineering and information systems and network security and Purdue University on electrical engineering and mechatronics
- Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (Finland): focuses on ‘science with a purpose’ they have a specialty in clean energy and engineering. They explicitly create partnerships with tech/business to carry out the research and see it to market. It is a university focused on interdisciplinarity and seems to have aggressively hired top faculty leaders. It is 11th in THE’s world's best small universities.
Duncan Ross, THE’s chief data officer, said:
“This is the first time analysis of interdisciplinary science in higher education has been done like this and this preliminary research is very encouraging.
“It shows, for universities to address ISR far more importance needs to be placed on evidencing what they are doing. Two particular areas where they need to address this is in recruitment and recognition of interdisciplinarity.
“By adopting interdisciplinary approaches, which harnesses the skills and techniques from a broad range of science subjects, universities will be able to significantly innovate enabling them to make breakthrough discoveries to help solve the world’s biggest challenges.”
Dr Megan Kenna, executive director of Schmidt Science Fellows, said:
“We want to help develop robust and trusted ways to measure and analyse how universities are supporting interdisciplinary science. By recognizing and celebrating the universities doing this well, we can shine a light on best practice and show other institutions wanting to strengthen their own efforts the path to follow. This initial analysis of data collected by THE this year provides both useful insights and signposts how we can evolve to create a ranking that could be valuable for universities in the future. We want to talk with universities in the coming months to hear thoughts about what metrics of support for interdisciplinary science would be most accurate and useful.”
Science that crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries has shown to be a powerful way to drive innovation and new discoveries.
THE and Schmidt Science Fellows have partnered to recognise, incentivise, and celebrate interdisciplinary science in higher education across the world to improve scientific excellence and collaboration amongst universities.
The organisations aim to develop a new Interdisciplinary Science Ranking to provide the sector with data to measure and benchmark achievement in scientific research that crosses disciplinary boundaries to help promote good practice and incentivise interdisciplinarity. The organisations aim to work together to collect data between January and March 2024, with the aspiration to publish a full Interdisciplinary Science Ranking in 2024.
Universities will be able to use insights from the rankings to assess their own performance in interdisciplinary science against their peers, which aims to facilitate change in global science by supporting high-impact research.
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