Incentivising interdisciplinary research collaboration: evidence from Australia

There is a popular perception that interdisciplinary research collaboration can yield benefits to knowledge production, from improvements to creativity to advances in addressing real-world problems. However, studies into interdisciplinarity frequently point to material obstacles, such as burdensome time and resource requirements, difficulties in publishing, and scarce opportunities for grant funding, which imply that incentives or rewards might be required to motivate academics to collaborate with colleagues across research disciplines. This article reports the results of a survey of academics and interviews with senior university leaders at a large research-intensive university in Australia, which indicate a major difference of opinion on how to incentivise interdisciplinary collaboration. While survey respondents largely emphasised material concerns, university leaders cited cultural change as a preferred strategy. If interdisciplinary research collaboration is desired, this gap between the perceptions of academics, who do the research, and university leaders, who control the resources, will need to be bridged.