Cross-disciplinary research: What configurations of fields of science are found in grant proposals today?

Abstract

Considering the complexity of the world problems, it seems evident that they do not fit straightforwardly into a disciplinary framework. In this context, the question arises as to whether and how frequently several disciplines cooperate on research projects. Cross-disciplinary cooperation in research might be difficult for two reasons. On one hand, many researchers feel that efforts to achieve methodological rigour, exactness, and control are only possible in the circumscribed area of a discipline. On the other hand, it is claimed that funding organizations, with their rigid disciplinary classification systems, impede cross-disciplinary research in the context of their selection and evaluation procedures. For a total of N=8,496 grant proposals submitted to the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) from 1999 to 2009, detailed codings of the subdisciplines involved were available for the statistical analysis. Latent class analysis produced 12 latent classes or configurations of fields of science. Mono-disciplinary projects are very well represented in physics/astronomy/ mechanics, geosciences, and clinical medicine. Cross-disciplinarity is found particularly in research project proposals of fields of science with clearly overlapping content (e.g. preclinical and clinical medicine) and mainly in research proposals submitted by fields of science within the humanities and social sciences.