Cluster Terminologies for Promoting Interdisciplinary Scientific Cooperation in Clusters of Excellence

Scientific collaboration is getting more and more complex and interdisciplinary, which is even demanded by many research funding sources (Bryson, Studies for Innovation in a Modern Working Environment. International Monitoring, 2009). Good examples are the clusters of excellence supported by the German Research Foundation, consisting of many local institutions investigating a common research question from multidisciplinary perspectives. In such networks it is important to have structures that support the cooperation of researchers and the information exchange among them to reveal potential synergies and help exploiting those (Sydow, Management von Netzwerkorganisationen. Beiträge aus der „Managementforschung“, 2010). There are already a variety of tools available to assist collaboration in large businesses. However, there exists a lack of software, which is tailored to the specific needs of scientific cooperation structures. This demand is met by our Scientific Cooperation Platform (SCP). As part of the SCP the Cluster Terminologies application tackles the understanding between different scientific fields, i.e. differing terminologies. Our first goal is to capture the current state of terminologies in the cluster by gathering and visualizing information about which terms are used with what definition by whom in the cluster. This will raise awareness of where cooperation like interdisciplinary publications can lead to misunderstandings or the necessity to clarify a common terminology beforehand. The second step is to foster discussions about the terminology among the cluster members both in an informal manner as well as in specific workshops. Definitions for some terms will become clearer in this process, which can even lead to an ‘official’ cluster-wide definition. For other terms maybe at least an agreement among members from the same field can be achieved. However, for terms, which simply have significantly different meanings in different research fields, the main benefit in the SCP lies in the advanced understanding of the differing terminologies.