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How to evaluate the degree of interdisciplinarity of an institution?

Author

Listed:
  • Lorenzo Cassi

    (OST - Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques
    Université Paris 1)

  • Wilfriedo Mescheba

    (OST - Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques)

  • Élisabeth Turckheim

    (OST - Observatoire des Sciences et des Techniques
    INRA, Délégation à l’évaluation)

Abstract

The Stirling index of the set of references of the corpus documents is widely used in the literature on interdisciplinary research and is defined as the integration score of the corpus under study. Such an indicator is relevant at the scale of a research institution, however, there is a gap between the integration scores of individual documents, and a global score computed on the whole set of references. The difference between the global index and the average of individual document indexes carries another relevant information about the corpus: it measures the diversity between the reference profiles of the corpus documents. It is, therefore, named between article index whereas the average of the individual article indexes is called within article index. The statistical properties of these two indexes as well as of the global index are derived from a general approximation method for distributions and lead to statistical tests which can be used to make meaningful comparisons between an institution indexes and benchmark values. The two dimensions of the global index provide a more acute information on the interdisciplinary practices of an institution researchers in a given research domain and is, therefore, likely to contribute to strategic and management issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Lorenzo Cassi & Wilfriedo Mescheba & Élisabeth Turckheim, 2014. "How to evaluate the degree of interdisciplinarity of an institution?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 101(3), pages 1871-1895, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:101:y:2014:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-014-1280-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-014-1280-0
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Jingwei Zheng & Ke Zhang & Boya Han & Jiayi Hou, 2023. "Research Interdisciplinarity and Citation Impact: A Network Analysis of Social Networking Sites Research," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(3), pages 21582440231, August.
    3. Cottafava, Dario & Ascione, Grazia Sveva & Corazza, Laura & Dhir, Amandeep, 2022. "Sustainable development goals research in higher education institutions: An interdisciplinarity assessment through an entropy-based indicator," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 138-155.
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    5. Erin Leahey & Sondra N. Barringer & Misty Ring-Ramirez, 2019. "Universities’ structural commitment to interdisciplinary research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 118(3), pages 891-919, March.
    6. Xuefeng Wang & Zhinan Wang & Ying Huang & Yun Chen & Yi Zhang & Huichao Ren & Rongrong Li & Jinhui Pang, 2017. "Measuring interdisciplinarity of a research system: detecting distinction between publication categories and citation categories," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 2023-2039, June.
    7. Sondra N. Barringer & Erin Leahey & Karina Salazar, 2020. "What Catalyzes Research Universities to Commit to Interdisciplinary Research?," Research in Higher Education, Springer;Association for Institutional Research, vol. 61(6), pages 679-705, September.
    8. Hoang-Son Pham & Bram Vancraeynest & Hanne Poelmans & Sadia Vancauwenbergh & Amr Ali-Eldin, 2023. "Identifying interdisciplinary research in research projects," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(10), pages 5521-5544, October.
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