Do rankings suppress interdisciplinarity?

[Ismael Rafols]

Dear colleagues,

As shown in the link below, we have recently produced scientometric 
evidence that journal rankings widely used in Business and Management 
Schools have narrow disciplinary-based views on excellence and that this 
may result in disadvantage for interdisciplinary organisations in 
research evaluations. Such a bias may (and is likely to) lead to the 
suppression of interdisciplinary research.

The question now is to which extent these results can be generalised to 
other fields. Many qualitative studies argue indeed that this type of 
bias is common across science. However, we have only managed to find a 
few quantitative studies addressing this issue. We would appreciate if 
you let us know of other publications providing quantitative evidence of 
the existence or lack of bias against interidisciplinarity.

Many Thanks!
Ismael Rafols, SPRU, Univ. Sussex
*
How journal rankings can suppress interdisciplinarity.
The case of innovation studies in business and management
*by Ismael Rafols, Loet Leydesdorff, Alice O'Hare, Paul Nightingale and 
Andy Stirling
*
*Available at: 
http://www.interdisciplinaryscience.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=2 
<http://www.interdisciplinaryscience.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48&Itemid=2>
(or http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/ir28/IDR/Rafols2011-Rankings&IDR.pdf)

This work is partially funded by the SciSIP programm (NSF Award no. 
0830207), in collaboration with Alan Porter (http://idr.gatech.edu/). 
The findings and observations contained are those of the authors and do 
not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.

-- 
______________________________________________________________
Ismael Rafols, Research Fellow
SPRU -Science and Technology Policy Research
University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QE, England

i.rafols at sussex.ac.uk, +44(0)78 53865382
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/people/peoplelists/person/167630
http://www.interdisciplinaryscience.net
______________________________________________________________


-- 
__________________________________________________________

Ismael Rafols, Research Fellow
SPRU -Science and Technology Policy Research
University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QE, England

i.rafols at sussex.ac.uk, +44(0)78 53865382
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/people/peoplelists/person/167630
http://www.interdisciplinaryscience.net
______________________________________________________________

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