Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country

Abstract

[EN] This paper explores the relationship between interdisciplinarity and research pertaining to local issues. Using Colombian publications from 1991 until 2011 in the Web of Science, we investigate the relationship between the degree of interdisciplinarity and the local orientation of the articles. We find that a higher degree of interdisciplinarity in a publication is associated with a greater emphasis on Colombian issues. In particular, our results suggest that research that combines cognitively disparate disciplines, what we refer to as distal interdisciplinarity, tends to be associated with more local focus of research. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of policies aiming to foster the local socio-economic impact of research in developing countries.Diego Chavarro is grateful to Colciencias for their support through a PhD scholarship.The authors gratefully acknowledge support from the US National Science Foundation (Award #1064146-‘Revealing Innovation Pathways: Hybrid Science Mapsfor Technology Assessment and Foresight’). The findings and observations contained in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.Chavarro, D.; Tang, P.; Rafols García, I. (2014). Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country. Research Evaluation. 23(3):195-209. doi:10.1093/reseval/rvu01219520923