The conceptualization groundwork for indicators of Interdisciplinarity – A closer look at section references

Collaborations and interactions across boundaries has increasingly been recognized as important means to tackle the complexity of today’s societal challenges. Within the sciences, such boundary-crossing is manifested by different modes of interdisciplinary research (IDR), involving multi-, inter-, intra-, cross-, or transdisciplinary engagement of and with knowledge. Recognizing both the perceived scientific and societal promises of IDR, as well as the systemic barriers against and individual and collaborative challenges with engaging in IDR, several scientific funding organizations have made IDR a key funding priority. Much academic research has been devoted to better conceptualize, delineate and measure the phenomenon. In particular, bibliometric indicators have proliferated that define IDR in terms of knowledge integration at different levels of granularity. Usually, the focal dimension of knowledge integration is represented by diversity, which itself consists of three components: variety as the number of disciplinary categories, balance as the evenness of the distribution and disparity as the degree of difference between the categories. Diversity measures either combine or separate those three components in capturing the degree of IDR as knowledge integration; following the cognitive approach, these are usually applied to the publication’s reference list, where the references are usually assigned to disciplinary categories via their journals