Guidance, Flexibility Offered for Coping with S&T Convergence: Universities encouraged to reform interdisciplinary, multi-institution approaches

On the heels of a report from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) urging reform for interdisciplinary research, Congress gave its final approval of a bill designed to effectively promote collaborative research among universities and the public and private sectors. The Cooperative Research and Technology Enhancement (CREATE) Act of 2004 would allow the government to approve patent applications of inventions that have been made collaboratively among multiple organizations (see the June 28, 2004 issue of the Digest). The bill currently awaits the signature of President Bush.

The NAS report, Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, states that hiring policies, promotion, tenure and resource allocation that favor traditional disciplines all impede interdisciplinary research at many institutions. The report identifies steps individuals and institutions can take to enable interdisciplinary programs to be conducted and evaluated more effectively.

Suggestions for reform are provided for everyone who plays a key role in the research process, including students, postdoctoral scholars, researchers, educators, funding organizations, professional societies and journal editors. Among the recommendations are:

• Students and postdoctoral scholars should actively seek out interdisciplinary experience and pursue training and study in one or more fields in addition to their own.
• Researchers and faculty members who hire postdoctoral researchers from other fields should assume responsibility in educating them in the new specialty and take the initiative to learn about his or her expertise.
• Recruitment and hiring practices should strive to reach across departments with a greater emphasis on people with valuable interdisciplinary backgrounds.
• Funding organizations should provide mechanisms that link interdisciplinary research and education while also providing opportunities for broadening training for researchers and faculty members.
• Professional societies can serve as incubators for generating and facilitating interdisciplinary research programs. Societies also can facilitate by producing state-of-the-art reports on recent research developments and on the curriculum, assessment, and accreditation methods.

In addition, academic institutions should explore new models that foster and reward interdisciplinary interactions, the authors say. Industrial and national laboratories, they contend, often operate successfully because their research goals are established and pursued in terms of projects rather than by discipline.

Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research is available online or for purchase from National Academies Press at: http://www.nap.edu/