An approach to interdisciplinarity through bibliometric indicators

Interdisciplinarity has become of increasing interest in science in the past few years. This paper is a case study in the area of Chemistry, in which a series of different bibliometric indicators for measuring interdisciplinarity are presented. The following indicators are analysed: a) ISI multi-classification of journals in categories, b) patterns of citations and references outside category and c) multi-assignation of documents in Chemical Abstracts sections. Convergence between the different indicators is studied. Depending on the size of the unit analysed (area, category or journal) the most appropriate indicators are determined