Citation

Weber CT, Syed S. R. Soc. Open Sci. 2019; 6(7): e190473.

Affiliation

Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Royal Society Publishing)

DOI

10.1098/rsos.190473

PMID

31417745

PMCID

PMC6689644

Abstract

Interdisciplinary research has faced many challenges, including institutional, cultural and practical ones, while it has also been reported as a 'career risk' and even 'career suicide' for researchers pursuing such an education and approach. Yet, the propagation of challenges and risks can easily lead to a feeling of anxiety and disempowerment in researchers, which we think is counterproductive to improving interdisciplinarity in practice. Therefore, in the search of 'bright spots', which are examples of cases in which people have had positive experiences with interdisciplinarity, this study assesses the perceptions of researchers on interdisciplinarity on the social media platform Twitter. The results of this study show researchers' many positive experiences and successes of interdisciplinarity, and, as such, document examples of bright spots. These bright spots can give reason for optimistic thinking, which can potentially have many benefits for researchers' well-being, creativity and innovation, and may also inspire and empower researchers to strive for and pursue interdisciplinarity in the future.

Language: en

Keywords

academics; integrative research concepts; interdisciplinarity; opinions; perceptions; researchers