The Scientometric Measurement of Interdisciplinarity and Diversity in the Research Portfolios of Chinese Universities
Article Category: Research Paper
Published Online: Jun 24, 2021
Page range: 13 - 35
Received: Jan 17, 2021
Accepted: Jun 01, 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2021-0027
Keywords
© 2021 Lin Zhang et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Purpose
Interdisciplinarity is a hot topic in science and technology policy. However, the concept of interdisciplinarity is both abstract and complex, and therefore difficult to measure using a single indicator. A variety of metrics for measuring the diversity and interdisciplinarity of articles, journals, and fields have been proposed in the literature. In this article, we ask whether institutions can be ranked in terms of their (inter-)disciplinary diversity.
Design/methodology/approach
We developed a software application (interd_vb.exe) that outputs the values of relevant diversity indicators for any document set or network structure. The software is made available, free to the public, online. The indicators it considers include the advanced diversity indicators Rao-Stirling (
Findings
The empirical results suggest that
Research limitations
“Interdisciplinarity” can be operationalized as bibliographic coupling among (sets of) documents with references to disciplines. At the institutional level, however, diversity may also indicate comprehensiveness. Unlike impact (e.g. citation), diversity and interdisciplinarity are context-specific and therefore provide a second dimension to the evaluation.
Policy or practical implications
Operationalization and quantification make it necessary for analysts to make their choices and options clear. Although the equations used to calculate diversity are often mathematically transparent, the specification in terms of computer code helps the analyst to further precision in decisions. Although diversity is not necessarily a goal of universities, a high diversity score may inform potential policies concerning interdisciplinarity at the university level.
Originality/value
This article introduces a non-commercial online application to the public domain that allows researchers and policy analysts to measure “diversity” and “interdisciplinarity” using the various indicators as encompassing as possible for any document set or network structure (e.g. a network of co-authors). Insofar as we know, such a professional computing tool for evaluating data sets using diversity indicators has not yet been made available online.