Research Collaborations in Multidisciplinary Institutions: a Case Study of iSchools

Although closely related, multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are different. The former indicates the co-existence of multiple disciplines while the latter is more about the integration among various areas. As collaboration between researchers from different areas is one of the major approaches for interdisciplinarity, this research investigated whether higher levels of multidisciplinarity in academic institutions are related to more collaborations, especially more interdisciplinary collaborations, among its faculty members. Using U.S. iSchools as a case study, we applied social network analysis and text mining techniques to faculty members’ educational background and publication data, and proposed metrics for multidisciplinarity and collaboration interdisciplinarity. Our analysis results revealed that the multidisciplinarity of an iSchool is actually negatively correlated with the frequency and interdisciplinarity of research collaborations among its faculty members. This finding suggests that having a multidisciplinary environment alone is not sufficient to promote collaborations, nor interdisciplinary collaborations.