Influencing factors of and multiple paths to high performance in multidisciplinary scientific research cooperation in colleges in China: a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis

BACKGROUND: In the context of globalization of science and technology, multidisciplinary cooperation plays an important role in enhancing national scientific research strength. Many countries issue policies and reports to promote the implementation of interdisciplinary research. Colleges play a central role in knowledge generation and scientific inquiry and thus frequently contain a variety of scientific research organizations. With rapid advances in science, large-scale scientific research cooperation across disciplines and institutions is increasingly common. Many factors can affect the performance of research collaboration, and the implementation paths of some key factors remain unclear. In addition, no standardized collaboration system has been established in relevant research. Further studies on interdisciplinary scientific research cooperation will be particularly valuable for improving the efficiency of resource allocation and increasing the level of academic research. Here we explored the “joint effect” of various influencing factors on interdisciplinary collaborative research in colleges and the “interactions” among these factors. METHODS: With stratified-cluster random sampling, 358 researchers from 181 research teams at 6 colleges across China were surveyed using a self-administered questionnaire. We used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze data to obtain more insight into the status quo of interdisciplinary cooperation among colleges. RESULTS: The results showed that initiation and organization by an institution was a necessary condition for achieving high-performance scientific research collaboration. The performance incentive method of high-tech collaboration could be divided into four main paths: configuration organized by an institution; configuration organized by an institution, with high policy-based guarantees (PG); configuration organized by an institution, with high cooperation willingness (CW) and high cooperation ability (CA); and configuration organized by an institution, with high CW, abilities, and outputs. The drive mechanism of high performance in scientific cooperation could be divided into two types: organization-led and ability/willingness-driven. CONCLUSIONS: Only the integration of internal changes with the support of the external environment can ensure the stable development of multidisciplinary scientific research cooperation among colleges.