Associate Professor Lyn Grigg
Technology and Innovation Management Centre, The University of Queensland
Ron Johnston
Australian Centre for Innovation and International Competitiveness (ACIIC)
The University of Sydney
Nicky Milsom
Technology and Innovation Management Centre
The University of Queensland
Published 2003
© Commonwealth of Australia 2003
ISBN 0642 77350 5 (Electronic version)
DEST No. 7044.HERC03A
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Introduction
The Higher Education Division of the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA – now the Department of Education Science and Training – DEST) commissioned a study to investigate emerging issues with respect to cross-disciplinary research and the possible implications for higher education research of an increase in this activity. The current attention directed at cross-disciplinary research arises from a widespread recognition that important societal questions can no longer be adequately addressed within a single discipline, and, in fact, demand multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary conceptualization and subsequent research solutions (Royal Society, 1996; OECD, 1998, 2000; Gibbons, et al, 1994; Johnston, 1998). In addition, it is quite clear from a cursory examination of advances in many fields such as the life sciences, that it is the activity at the interfaces of disciplines that is of crucial importance to these advances.
These aspects of cross-disciplinary research activity have been apparent for several decades. However, while cross-disciplinarity is universally acclaimed in principle, it is also equally apparent that there may be problems with its actual practice (Caruso & Rhoten, 2002).
One of the key elements of the Government’s vision for Australian university research in Knowledge and Innovation: A Policy Statement on Research and Research Training was for a research system which enabled research organisations to respond flexibly to changes in the development of and demand for knowledge. In addition, the Government’s current research priority setting exercise, Developing National Research Priorities, wishes to target research areas of particular importance to Australia’s economy and society. These areas/problems, by their very nature, will involve cross-disciplinary explanatory power.
So, if cross-disciplinary research is regarded in Australia, as it is in the United States and Europe, as “good, desirable, and inevitable” (Sanz-Menendez, Bordons, & Zulueta, 2000, p.47), and, in fact, the norm rather than the exception, then evidence-based information is now required regarding how best to support and fund cross-disciplinary research programs. There are several key conceptual and empirical issues related to the practice of cross-disciplinary research that need to be examined before appropriate funding mechanisms can be developed and evaluated, hence the purpose of this study, and its preliminary nature.
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