The scientific goal of the project was to define the basic relationship between the level of interdisciplinarity of the implemented research topics and successes achieved by researchers in various fields of modern science. The study analyzed scientific activity of Polish researchers and related to the their successes in the area of research and publication of results. The guiding idea of the project was to identify, evaluate and measure the existing relationships and the level of interdisciplinarity in different areas of science.
Research carried out in the project made it possible to identify and obtain information on the level of interdisciplinarity in various areas of research and science. Interdisciplinarity is present in a variety of scientific disciplines and interdisciplinary scientists achieve higher average scores in publishing the results of their work in diverse thematic periodicals.
The average level of the interdisciplinarity indicator increases with the number of projects carried out by individual researchers. This regularity is justified statistically. The greater the number of projects carried out by a scientist, the greater the likelihood of conducting research in various neighboring disciplines. At the same time, scientists with the highest levels of the interdisciplinarity indicator are not only highly interdisciplinary because of the number of completed projects but their level of interdisciplinarity is associated with conducting research in two or more distant scientific disciplines.
As an additional goal of the project, research was conducted on the impact of the level of interdisciplinarity on the probability of implementation of research results in the economy. Individual case studies confirmed indirectly that interdisciplinary researchers achieving high publication productivity also have substantial experience in cooperation with enterprises.
The project was implemented within the framework announced by the National Science Centre – Sonata 5 NCN.
Subject:Determinants for interdisciplinarity of science in relation to research conducted by scientists.
Project leader: Dr. Izabela Kijeńska-Dąbrowska
Duration: 27 February 2014 – 26 November 2015