Purpose:Interdisciplinary research has become a critical approach to addressing complex societal,economic,technological,and environmental challenges,driving innovation and integrating scientific knowledge.While interd...Purpose:Interdisciplinary research has become a critical approach to addressing complex societal,economic,technological,and environmental challenges,driving innovation and integrating scientific knowledge.While interdisciplinarity indicators are widely used to evaluate research performance,the impact of classification granularity on these assessments remains underexplored.Design/methodology/approach:This study investigates how different levels of classification granularity-macro,meso,and micro-affect the evaluation of interdisciplinarity in research institutes.Using a dataset of 262 institutes from four major German non-university organizations(FHG,HGF,MPG,WGL)from 2018 to 2022,we examine inconsistencies in interdisciplinarity across levels,analyze ranking changes,and explore the influence of institutional fields and research focus(applied vs.basic).Findings:Our findings reveal significant inconsistencies in interdisciplinarity across classification levels,with rankings varying substantially.Notably,the Fraunhofer Society(FHG),which performs well at the macro level,experiences significant ranking declines at meso and micro levels.Normalizing interdisciplinarity by research field confirmed that these declines persist.The research focus of institutes,whether applied,basic,or mixed,does not significantly explain the observed ranking dynamics.Research limitations:This study has only considered the publication-based dimension of institutional interdisciplinarity and has not explored other aspects.Practical implications:The findings provide insights for policymakers,research managers,and scholars to better interpret interdisciplinarity metrics and support interdisciplinary research effectively.Originality/value:This study underscores the critical role of classification granularity in interdisciplinarity assessment and emphasizes the need for standardized approaches to ensure robust and fair evaluations.展开更多
Purpose： This study aims to compare the characteristics of citation disciplinary structure between the G7 countries and the BRICS countries.Design/Methodology/Approach： In this contribution, which uses about 1 milli...Purpose： This study aims to compare the characteristics of citation disciplinary structure between the G7 countries and the BRICS countries.Design/Methodology/Approach： In this contribution, which uses about 1 million Web of Science publications and two publications years（1993 and 2013）, we compare the G7 countries and the BRICS countries with regard to this type of structure. For the publication year 2013, cosine similarity values regarding the citation disciplinary structures of these countries（and of nine other countries） were used as input to cluster analysis. We also obtained cosine similarity values for a given country and its citation disciplinary structures across the two publication years. Moreover, for the publication year 2013, the within-country JeffreysMatusita distance between publication and citation disciplinary structure was measured. Research limitations： First, the citation disciplinary structures of countries depend on multiple and complex factors. It is therefore difficult to completely explain the formation and change of the citation disciplinary structure of a country. This study suggests some possible causes, whereas detailed explanations might be given by future research. Second, the length of the citation window used in this study is three years. However, scientific disciplines differ in their citation practices. Comparison between citations across disciplines using the same citation window length may affect the citation discipline structure results for some countries.Practical limitations： First, the results of this study are based on the WoS database. However, in this database some fields are covered to a greater extent than others, which may affect the results for the citation discipline structure for some studied countries. In future research, we might repeat this study using another database（like Scopus） and, in that case, we would like to make comparisons between the two outcomes. Second, the use of a constant journal setyielded that a large share of the journals covered by WoS year 2013 is ignored in the study. Thus, disciplinary structure is studied based on a quite restricted set of publications. The three mentioned limitations should be kept in mind when the results of this study are interpreted.Originality/value： Disciplinary structure on country level is a highlighted topic for the S＆T policy makers, especially for those come from developing countries. This study observes the disciplinary structure in the view of academic impact, and the result will provide some evidence to make decision for the discipline strategy and funding allocation. Besides, JeffreysMatusita distance is introduced to measure the similarity of citation disciplinary structure and publication disciplinary structure. By applying this measure, some new observations were drawn, for example, ＂Based on the comparison of publication disciplinary structure and citation disciplinary structure, the paper finds most BRICS counties have less impact with more publications＂.Findings： The outcome of the cluster analysis indicates that the G7 countries and BRICS countries are quite heterogeneous regarding their citation disciplinary structure. For a majority of the G7 countries, the citation disciplinary structure tend to be more stable compared to BRICS countries with regard to the years 1993 and 2013. Most G7 countries, with United States as an exception, turned out to have lower values on the Jeffreys-Matusita distance than BRICS countries, indicating a higher degree of heterogeneity between the publication and the citation disciplinary structure for the latter countries. In other words, BRICS countries still receive much less citations in most disciplines than their publication output would suggest. G7 countries can still expect more citations than is to be expected based on their publication output, thereby generating relatively more impact than BRICS countries.展开更多
文摘Purpose:Interdisciplinary research has become a critical approach to addressing complex societal,economic,technological,and environmental challenges,driving innovation and integrating scientific knowledge.While interdisciplinarity indicators are widely used to evaluate research performance,the impact of classification granularity on these assessments remains underexplored.Design/methodology/approach:This study investigates how different levels of classification granularity-macro,meso,and micro-affect the evaluation of interdisciplinarity in research institutes.Using a dataset of 262 institutes from four major German non-university organizations(FHG,HGF,MPG,WGL)from 2018 to 2022,we examine inconsistencies in interdisciplinarity across levels,analyze ranking changes,and explore the influence of institutional fields and research focus(applied vs.basic).Findings:Our findings reveal significant inconsistencies in interdisciplinarity across classification levels,with rankings varying substantially.Notably,the Fraunhofer Society(FHG),which performs well at the macro level,experiences significant ranking declines at meso and micro levels.Normalizing interdisciplinarity by research field confirmed that these declines persist.The research focus of institutes,whether applied,basic,or mixed,does not significantly explain the observed ranking dynamics.Research limitations:This study has only considered the publication-based dimension of institutional interdisciplinarity and has not explored other aspects.Practical implications:The findings provide insights for policymakers,research managers,and scholars to better interpret interdisciplinarity metrics and support interdisciplinary research effectively.Originality/value:This study underscores the critical role of classification granularity in interdisciplinarity assessment and emphasizes the need for standardized approaches to ensure robust and fair evaluations.
文摘Purpose： This study aims to compare the characteristics of citation disciplinary structure between the G7 countries and the BRICS countries.Design/Methodology/Approach： In this contribution, which uses about 1 million Web of Science publications and two publications years（1993 and 2013）, we compare the G7 countries and the BRICS countries with regard to this type of structure. For the publication year 2013, cosine similarity values regarding the citation disciplinary structures of these countries（and of nine other countries） were used as input to cluster analysis. We also obtained cosine similarity values for a given country and its citation disciplinary structures across the two publication years. Moreover, for the publication year 2013, the within-country JeffreysMatusita distance between publication and citation disciplinary structure was measured. Research limitations： First, the citation disciplinary structures of countries depend on multiple and complex factors. It is therefore difficult to completely explain the formation and change of the citation disciplinary structure of a country. This study suggests some possible causes, whereas detailed explanations might be given by future research. Second, the length of the citation window used in this study is three years. However, scientific disciplines differ in their citation practices. Comparison between citations across disciplines using the same citation window length may affect the citation discipline structure results for some countries.Practical limitations： First, the results of this study are based on the WoS database. However, in this database some fields are covered to a greater extent than others, which may affect the results for the citation discipline structure for some studied countries. In future research, we might repeat this study using another database（like Scopus） and, in that case, we would like to make comparisons between the two outcomes. Second, the use of a constant journal setyielded that a large share of the journals covered by WoS year 2013 is ignored in the study. Thus, disciplinary structure is studied based on a quite restricted set of publications. The three mentioned limitations should be kept in mind when the results of this study are interpreted.Originality/value： Disciplinary structure on country level is a highlighted topic for the S＆T policy makers, especially for those come from developing countries. This study observes the disciplinary structure in the view of academic impact, and the result will provide some evidence to make decision for the discipline strategy and funding allocation. Besides, JeffreysMatusita distance is introduced to measure the similarity of citation disciplinary structure and publication disciplinary structure. By applying this measure, some new observations were drawn, for example, ＂Based on the comparison of publication disciplinary structure and citation disciplinary structure, the paper finds most BRICS counties have less impact with more publications＂.Findings： The outcome of the cluster analysis indicates that the G7 countries and BRICS countries are quite heterogeneous regarding their citation disciplinary structure. For a majority of the G7 countries, the citation disciplinary structure tend to be more stable compared to BRICS countries with regard to the years 1993 and 2013. Most G7 countries, with United States as an exception, turned out to have lower values on the Jeffreys-Matusita distance than BRICS countries, indicating a higher degree of heterogeneity between the publication and the citation disciplinary structure for the latter countries. In other words, BRICS countries still receive much less citations in most disciplines than their publication output would suggest. G7 countries can still expect more citations than is to be expected based on their publication output, thereby generating relatively more impact than BRICS countries.
