Diversity of researchers' fields of specialization: An analysis of interdisciplinarity

Abstract

Background. There is growing expectation at university campuses for interdisciplinary research that combines multiple spheres of knowledge to deal with increasingly complex social issues. However, few studies have focused on researchers' attributes because of the challenge of disambiguating researchers' names. Objectives. We analyze the interdisciplinarity of six fields from two points of view focusing on the diversity of researchers' specializations: the number of researchers' fields of specialization; and the dispersion of the number of researchers among the fields of specialization. Methods. We investigated the number of different fields of specialization for not only the targeted field as a whole but also for each researcher and article. As for dispersion among the fields of specialization, we calculated Simpson's D and Shannon's H'. Results. The findings indicate that the targeted 6 fields were progressing in interdisciplinarity. On the other hand, for individual researchers, the number of different fields of specialization tends to decrease with years.