Research Across Disciplines

"Assessment of transdisciplinary projects by traditional means and structures falls short in a number of ways. Firstly, research across disciplines rarely satisfies the criteria and standards of all of the disciplines involved. Researchers rarely have sufficient time and focus to be fully versed and proficient in more than one discipline. Moreover, transdisciplinary research generally creates its own criteria and standards, because of its unique, emergent qualities. These emergent qualities include the integration of different bodies of knowledge, the synthesis of new approaches and techniques of inquiry and the communication of specialised knowledge across disciplinary boundaries and beyond. In addition, transdisciplinarity requires new modes of collaboration and interaction between researchers. While these qualities and skills of communication, synthesis and teamwork give unique value to transdisciplinarity, they are not explicitly taken into account in current assessment processes. Rather than encouraging these important characteristics, individual researchers may effectively be penalised for them."

Dr Wendy Russell, Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Wollongong.

http://www.wisenet-australia.org/issue53/transdis.htm