Cultural barriers to interdisciplinary research collaboration: evidence from Australia

Interdisciplinary research collaboration has been linked to improvements in innovation, creativity, and research impact. While differences between research cultures—especially between science and arts—are often cited as a barrier to interdisciplinary collaboration, there is actually little empirical evidence to confirm this phenomenon. In this study, responses to a survey of academics and interviews with senior university leaders at a large research university in Australia reveal a significant and asymmetrical cultural divide between respondents in science-based and arts-based disciplines, in that science-based researchers expressed reluctance to collaborate with arts-based researchers but the reverse was not found to be true. Furthermore, a lack of awareness of this problem among researchers and university administrators was evident. This paper makes three contributions: first, it provides empirical evidence supporting the historically mythologized claim of significant cultural barriers between science-based researchers and arts-based researchers, and demonstrates that this correlates with a reluctance to collaborate; second, it elaborates a fairly representative case study in which efforts to improve interdisciplinary collaboration were hindered by the fact that university leaders were unaware of the major barriers to interdisciplinarity, especially between arts and sciences; and third, it outlines a solution pathway based on increased exposure and networking.