Re-appraising disciplines: a commentary

Abstract

Our aim in this commentary is to challenge one of the claims made by interdisciplinarity advocates: that disciplines are silos and, as such, hinder cross-disciplinary knowledge exchange. This claim is a central feature in interdisciplinarity advocates’ rationale for promoting structural changes across universities and reallocating resources toward interdisciplinary research units and training programmes. We use citation practices to demonstrate that cross disciplinary communication occurs despite claims otherwise. Considering the overwhelming amount of data generated by bibliometric studies, we argue that knowledge exchange across disciplines is too large to be ignored and that the silo thesis should be re-examined. The longitudinal perspective adopted by bibliometricians also shows that cross-disciplinary communication is far from being a new trend, but to the contrary is a well-established practice among academic communities. We begin our commentary by briefly reviewing three widespread assumptions underpinning pro-interdisciplinary arguments: (1) disciplines’ specialization hinders cross-disciplinary communication; (2) disciplines shun away from addressing real world problems; (3) disciplines are self-centred entities primarily competing for academic authority. We conclude our commentary by suggesting that a better understanding of the benefits and limits of interdisciplinarity requires moving away from broad statements about the alleged insularity of disciplines and openness of interdisciplinarity.