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Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity

This article analyses the effect of degree of interdisciplinarity on the citation impact of individual publications for four different scientific fields. We operationalise interdisciplinarity as disciplinary diversity in the references of a publication, and rather than treating interdisciplinarity a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo, Rafols, Ismael, D’Este, Pablo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534379/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26266805
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135095
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author Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo
Rafols, Ismael
D’Este, Pablo
author_facet Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo
Rafols, Ismael
D’Este, Pablo
author_sort Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo
collection PubMed
description This article analyses the effect of degree of interdisciplinarity on the citation impact of individual publications for four different scientific fields. We operationalise interdisciplinarity as disciplinary diversity in the references of a publication, and rather than treating interdisciplinarity as a monodimensional property, we investigate the separate effect of different aspects of diversity on citation impact: i.e. variety, balance and disparity. We use a Tobit regression model to examine the effect of these properties of interdisciplinarity on citation impact, controlling for a range of variables associated with the characteristics of publications. We find that variety has a positive effect on impact, whereas balance and disparity have a negative effect. Our results further qualify the separate effect of these three aspects of diversity by pointing out that all three dimensions of interdisciplinarity display a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship with citation impact. These findings can be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, they are consistent with the view that, while combining multiple fields has a positive effect in knowledge creation, successful research is better achieved through research efforts that draw on a relatively proximal range of fields, as distal interdisciplinary research might be too risky and more likely to fail. On the other hand, these results may be interpreted as suggesting that scientific audiences are reluctant to cite heterodox papers that mix highly disparate bodies of knowledge—thus giving less credit to publications that are too groundbreaking or challenging.
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spelling pubmed-45343792015-08-24 Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo Rafols, Ismael D’Este, Pablo PLoS One Research Article This article analyses the effect of degree of interdisciplinarity on the citation impact of individual publications for four different scientific fields. We operationalise interdisciplinarity as disciplinary diversity in the references of a publication, and rather than treating interdisciplinarity as a monodimensional property, we investigate the separate effect of different aspects of diversity on citation impact: i.e. variety, balance and disparity. We use a Tobit regression model to examine the effect of these properties of interdisciplinarity on citation impact, controlling for a range of variables associated with the characteristics of publications. We find that variety has a positive effect on impact, whereas balance and disparity have a negative effect. Our results further qualify the separate effect of these three aspects of diversity by pointing out that all three dimensions of interdisciplinarity display a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) relationship with citation impact. These findings can be interpreted in two different ways. On the one hand, they are consistent with the view that, while combining multiple fields has a positive effect in knowledge creation, successful research is better achieved through research efforts that draw on a relatively proximal range of fields, as distal interdisciplinary research might be too risky and more likely to fail. On the other hand, these results may be interpreted as suggesting that scientific audiences are reluctant to cite heterodox papers that mix highly disparate bodies of knowledge—thus giving less credit to publications that are too groundbreaking or challenging. Public Library of Science 2015-08-12 /pmc/articles/PMC4534379/ /pubmed/26266805 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135095 Text en © 2015 Yegros-Yegros et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Yegros-Yegros, Alfredo
Rafols, Ismael
D’Este, Pablo
Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title_full Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title_fullStr Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title_full_unstemmed Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title_short Does Interdisciplinary Research Lead to Higher Citation Impact? The Different Effect of Proximal and Distal Interdisciplinarity
title_sort does interdisciplinary research lead to higher citation impact? the different effect of proximal and distal interdisciplinarity
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4534379/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26266805
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0135095
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