Discussion

• Is there a problem with taking over other people’s knowledge? Who determines where initiatives come from? How do you address this ethical/political problem?
   
• An even broader example is when working internationally, who keeps the data, etc.?
   
• There are two categories: 1. creating ideas/information which is broad and interactive 2. research in which every member brings expertise to find the solution of the problem.
   
• Each researcher brings knowledge, receptivity, and need. If there is hyperdiversity there will be a loss of rigour and focus. Researchers need new forms of community and interaction and in this case the group would meet again to develop momentum.
   
• Technology is ahead of the public mind. For example, if ethicists were involved, biotechnology would not be in the trouble it is today.
   
• Internationally we need "power with" not "power over". Academia tends to promote "power over". How does one justify "power with" when the University does not recognize collaboration and team membership, but first authorship?
   
• We need to be able to recognize people’s contributions and the source of ideas/power. This must be self-organized, it can’t be imposed from the top.
   
• Institutions — The collective agreement doesn’t facilitate interdisciplinary research because of the way we priorize journal papers, procedures, and performance standards. Teamwork takes more time and produces fewer publications.
   
• Interdisciplinary research at this University tends to rely on students to take the risk and find interdisciplinary supervisors.
   
• In an example from the U of S, a faculty member in one department was part of an interdisciplinary research group and when promotion time came the interdisciplinary work was downplayed so that person was penalized for doing interdisciplinary work. How can we foster interdisciplinary research?
   
• In health research, "interdisciplinary" is a buzzword and people want to foster it. Interdisciplinary research is seen as a stage in one’s career. Junior researchers are not willing to get into interdisciplinary research — they want to get established first. If we think of interdisciplinarity as a career path, then we should be aiming at mid-career faculty.
   
• Successful groups cultivate cross-connections. Perhaps it is bad to leave interdisciplinary research to mid-career.
   
• I disagree at aiming at mid-career researchers. We need to create an environment where it is legitimate, valid work and create support for young faculty. The most interesting research occurs at the interface of disciplines and young faculty should be able to do this research too.
   
• Granting agencies are shifting to expand university boundaries by requiring commitments from non-university partners. We need to think beyond university disciplines and boundaries. If our goals are to value interdisciplinary work then the traditional academic model of measuring outputs by papers will need to expand to measuring social benefits, and partner benefits.
   
• In my experience, multidisciplinary teams were more a coalition of researchers working on a problem with diverse aspects, publishing products within their own disciplines. There is a lack of interdisciplinarity. We need to come up with alternatives for graduate students, to train people in how to understand different disciplines. We need a new group capable of thinking in different disciplines to help draw teams together.
   
• We need to be able to accept the ideas of others outside our disciplines as valid and argue from logic, not authority (i.e., we don’t need board certification to be able to discuss novel research outside of our discipline).
   
• For the public to accept the validity of what we do, we need board certification.
   
• But we shouldn’t allow certification to get in the way of our research.
   
• We should nourish interdisciplinarity at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We need to transform the institution and culture and value and protect interdisciplinarity for students and faculty. It’s a combination of integration and aggregation.
   
• The University has multiple purposes. As the People’s University, interdisciplinary research can help us solve Saskatchewan problems, measured by research, extension, and public service.
   
• Outputs are measured by: 1. numbers of academic papers, and 2. academic papers with one reader (a model that is killing us). We need balance. Grant money is publication dependent. By leaving emphasis on funding and increasing time to tenure, the advice for young faculty is "churn out papers."
   

Discussion

• Is there a problem with receiving due credit for interdisciplinary research at the U of S?
   
• Yes. One researcher who was involved in collaborative work was questioned when promotion time came as to specifically how much did s/he contribute.
   
• Departments and colleges need to be able to assess the value of interdisciplinary research. The tendency now is to ignore it. What happens to people who dedicate part or all of their time to interdisciplinary research? We need to set up interdisciplinary research to enliven and create new disciplinary departments. Now with a big project, interdisciplinary researchers have difficulties maintaining links to their original disciplines to get feedback.
   
• There is nothing wrong with justifying your research and over time it will become easier to "make a case" for interdisciplinary research. Interdisciplinary research requires more time which is why more senior faculty than junior faculty get involved since well-established disciplinary routes will produce two to three times the output. Interdisciplinary research is a career penalty for young faculty.
   
• Business people can immediately see the practicality of interdisciplinary research but academics tend to resist.
   
• Researchers involved in interdisciplinary research should leave a paper trail by including it in their annual reviews. Increased exposure of interdisciplinary research will increase its value.
   
• Interdisciplinary graduate students are not committed to disciplinary boundaries.
   
• We need to increase cross-departmental and joint appointments and change the administrative difficulties with doing so.
   
• How do you get started with collaborative research?
   
• Both parties need to support the research and have a comfort zone.
   
• Should we have an "overseer" to link up projects with collaborative potential on campus?
   
• Collaborative relationships must come from the bottom up.
   
• When you make connections, choose collaborators whose strengths complement yours.
   
• At other universities, teams are put together by an administrative assistant. Here it is done by faculty.
   
• To be effective we need to accept legitimacy of other scholarly activities on campus and other perspectives.
   
• One way to promote interdisciplinary research campus-wide is through a symposium.
   
• How do people connect — we need to increase the opportunities to chat over coffee, etc.
   
• At our staff meetings we talk mostly about people’s research, not administration.
   
• In the humanities there is a perception that there is a pressure to work with a science model of interdisciplinary research. We need a clear, concise description of interdisciplinary research.
   
• More opportunities to network on a regular basis will cultivate interdisciplinary research, finding common problems to address.
   
• People have to discover on their own what interdisciplinary research models work for them.
   
• Sharing with experienced academics will help people get started in an interdisciplinary framework.