IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jamest/v50y1999i3p271-279.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Boundary crossing in research literatures as a means of interdisciplinary information transfer

Author

Listed:
  • Sydney J. Pierce

Abstract

Contemporary models of interdisciplinary information transfer treat disciplines as such sharply bounded groups that boundary‐crossing publication (contributions to disciplinary literatures authored by researchers from other disciplines) should be very difficult, if not impossible. Yet boundary‐crossing authors can be identified in many disciplinary literatures. A study of four core journals in political science and sociology identified 199 articles with first authors from other disciplines published between 1971 and 1990. Two‐thirds of these articles had single authors, and only one in six had coauthors from the discipline of the journal in which they were published. Readership and use of these articles, as measured by citation rates, was only slightly below normal. The articles were judged successful in interdisciplinary information transfer in that they received more citations from the disciplines in which they were published than from the disciplines with which their first authors were affiliated, and more citations from other disciplines than from either the discipline of publication or the first author's discipline. Results suggest that disciplinary boundaries are less restrictive than the literature suggests, and that boundary‐crossing publications are involved in complex patterns of interdisciplinary information transfer.

Suggested Citation

  • Sydney J. Pierce, 1999. "Boundary crossing in research literatures as a means of interdisciplinary information transfer," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 50(3), pages 271-279.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:50:y:1999:i:3:p:271-279
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:33.0.CO;2-M
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:33.0.CO;2-M
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:33.0.CO;2-M?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Iina Hellsten & Renaud Lambiotte & Andrea Scharnhorst & Marcel Ausloos, 2007. "Self-citations, co-authorships and keywords: A new approach to scientists’ field mobility?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 72(3), pages 469-486, September.
    2. Alexandre Truc, 2022. "The Disciplinary Mobility of Core Behavioral Economists," GREDEG Working Papers 2022-27, Groupe de REcherche en Droit, Economie, Gestion (GREDEG CNRS), Université Côte d'Azur, France.
    3. Meijun Liu & Xiao Hu & Jiang Li, 2018. "Knowledge flow in China’s humanities and social sciences," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 52(2), pages 607-626, March.
    4. Bei Zeng & Haihua Lyu & Zhenyue Zhao & Jiang Li, 2021. "Exploring the direction and diversity of interdisciplinary knowledge diffusion: A case study of professor Zeyuan Liu's scientific publications," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(7), pages 6253-6272, July.
    5. Raasch, Christina & Lee, Viktor & Spaeth, Sebastian & Herstatt, Cornelius, 2013. "The rise and fall of interdisciplinary research: The case of open source innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(5), pages 1138-1151.
    6. Yu-Wei Chang, 2018. "Examining interdisciplinarity of library and information science (LIS) based on LIS articles contributed by non-LIS authors," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 1589-1613, September.
    7. Lennart Björneborn & Peter Ingwersen, 2001. "Perspective of webometrics," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 50(1), pages 65-82, January.
    8. Rodriguez, Marko A. & Pepe, Alberto, 2008. "On the relationship between the structural and socioacademic communities of a coauthorship network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 195-201.
    9. Ahmed Sabab Sharek & Kalim U. Shah, 2021. "Tracking the quality of scientific knowledge inputs in reports generated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 11(4), pages 586-594, December.
    10. Chakraborty, Tanmoy & Tammana, Vihar & Ganguly, Niloy & Mukherjee, Animesh, 2015. "Understanding and modeling diverse scientific careers of researchers," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 69-78.
    11. Koppman, Sharon & Leahey, Erin, 2019. "Who moves to the methodological edge? Factors that encourage scientists to use unconventional methods," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(9), pages 1-1.
    12. Ed J. Rinia & Thed N. van Leeuwen & Eppo E. W. Bruins & Hendrik G. van Vuren & Anthony F. J. van Raan, 2002. "Measuring knowledge transfer between fields of science," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 54(3), pages 347-362, July.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jamest:v:50:y:1999:i:3:p:271-279. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.asis.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.