Interdisciplinary research: From belief to reality

Science

Volumn 283, Issue 5402, 1999, Pages 642-643

  Metzger, Norman ^a   Zare, Richard N ^b  

^a Water Science and Technology Board   (United States)

^b STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC ASPECT; FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT; MEDICAL RESEARCH; POLICY; PRIORITY JOURNAL; SCIENCE; SHORT SURVEY;

EID: 0033613937     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.283.5402.642     Document Type: Short Survey

References (5)

1. Our use of the term "interdisciplinary research" embraces variants of the term, such as cross- and multi-disciplinary. It also includes "interdependent research," a relatively new concept connoting work done wholly within one well-defined discipline, which in time is exploited with great rewards by another discipline; for example, the work done on atomic spin that led to magnetic resonance imaging in medicine.
2. This historical discussion is abstracted from a more detailed one in Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 41-43.
3. Specifically those agencies are NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy, EPA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
4. Program managers typically have responsibility for one discipline or a set of closely related ones. Although that is certainly a very effective structure, we also believe that it needs to be complemented by managers of disciplinary programs meeting as a unit that is empowered to make funding decisions on interdisciplinary proposals. This matrix management scheme would help to deal more effectively with proposals whose disciplinarity does not parse neatly.
5. This article is based in part on a talk the authors gave to the board of the W. M. Keck Foundation, and we thank the board and officers of the foundation for encouraging us to examine this issue. R.N.Z. also acknowledges that his thinking on the issue of interdisciplinary research was stimulated by his service on the organizing committee for a symposium on the "Nature and Dynamics of Interdisciplinary Research," which was held at the Wenner-Gren Center in Stockholm, Sweden, 11 to 14 November 1998.