Chizuko Takei
Graduate School of Library, Information and Media Studies, University of Tsukuba, Japan
(naoe.chizuko@adm.nagoua-u.ac.jp)
Jiro Kikkawa
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan
(jiro@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp)
Fuyuki Yoshikane
Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba, Japan
(fuyuki@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp)
Background. To support the development of interdisciplinary research effectively, it is essential to provide research funding that takes into account the interdisciplinary characteristics of the field.
Objectives. We investigated the progress of interdisciplinarity between 1997 and 2017 for 12 selected target fields, from two points of view, focusing on the diversity of researchers’ specializations: (1) the number of researchers’ fields of specialization, and (2) the dispersion of the number of researchers among the fields of specialization.
Methods. For (1), we investigated different specialization fields, not only the target field as a whole but also for each researcher (author) and each article. For (2), we calculated the Gini coefficient and the coefficient of variation.
Results. Different characteristics were observed depending on the viewpoint and the index. The increase rate of (1) was especially high in Materials Science, Biomaterials. The rate of decline of (2) was particularly significant in Information Science & Library Science, Environmental Sciences and Anthropology. It was found that the interdisciplinarity of a field cannot be judged simply as high or low. Interdisciplinarity has gradually grown: not always increasing but also sometimes decreasing or stagnating at times.
Contributions. This study has offered a different perspective of interdisciplinarity, and also charted how it has strengthened over the past 20 years.
Cite: Takei, C., Kikkawa, J., & Yoshikane, F. (2022). Progress in interdisciplinarity: Bibliometric analysis of the diversity of researchers’ fields of specialization over a 20-year period. LIBRES, 32(1), 64-80. https://doi.org/10.32655/LIBRES.2022.1.5