Nature: Interdisciplinary research is less likely to be funded

Release date: 2016-07-05

A study published in Nature on June 30 showed that the higher the interdisciplinary research project, the less likely it is to get funding.

Although interdisciplinary research is often considered a fertile ground for innovation and often receives support at the policy level, conventional wisdom suggests that interdisciplinary research is more difficult to obtain funding from research grants than research projects targeting narrow areas. However, this view has not undergone extensive systematic research.

Australian National University Lindell Bromham and colleagues studied fund application data for 18,476 related research proposals in the arts, humanities, and sciences, which were submitted to the Australian Research Council between 2010 and 2014. Using this data, the researchers used an indicator that is “interdisciplinary distance” to describe the relative representation of different fields and the gaps between domains. The study found that the farther interdisciplinary distance is in a stable negative correlation with the success rate of the fund, this result has nothing to do with the fund application year, and has nothing to do with the number of research fields involved in the application, and has nothing to do with the primary research field.

The researchers speculate that the low success rate of funding support for interdisciplinary projects may be related to the fact that those who review these fund applications are not good at evaluating the entire project. In addition, when using the same assessment indicators to assess success rates, the average quality of interdisciplinary project applications may not be as high as in narrower areas of research. This research provides the basis for further analysis of the development of interdisciplinary research.

Source: Chinese Journal of Science

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