Interdisciplinary research is important and necessary to address complex problems. The idea of working in interdisciplinary research teams is catching on more and more. This is also true in academic research.
What is the secret of successful interdisciplinary research? I have identified those aspects both from my own experience and from reports of others. Read about the seven ingredients for making your interdisciplinary research a success.
Devise your common objective
Your interdisciplinary team should have a shared mission. You should work together towards a common goal. Thus, you need to define the problem the team sets out to solve very clearly. The good news is that interdisciplinary teams are much better suited to solve complex problems than a single discipline.
Acknowledge your ignorance
Be prepared to be the dumbest person in the room when it comes to all disciplines other than your own. Acknowledge your ignorance and do not worry if you don’t understand much at first. Be prepared to listen and to ask questions. Actually, embrace your ignorance (read also why not knowing is the new knowing). For exerts in their fields it is hard work to start over at beginner level in other disciplines. It takes a lot of dedication and commitment to do so.
For this reason, it is important to foster a culture of open discussions and mutual explanations. According to a nature arcticle about interdisciplinary, team members oscillate between educating and learning. In short, don’t assume everyone knows what you know, don’t be afraid to ask questions.
Get involved in each other’s fields
Show some interest in learning at least the basics of each other’s disciplines. Oftentimes team members only feel responsible for the single task assigned to them. They do deliver what was required, but this is where their involvement ends. This is not true interdisciplinary. Do not limit yourself to your area of expertise.
It is equally important not to set up the project one sided. Do not start out so that the other discipline only confirm or embellish what you found. This, too, is not true interdisciplinary.
Make an effort to learn about the specific approaches, unsolved problems, and limitations of your co-workers’ areas of work. In reverse, try to apply your approaches, methods, or ways of thinking to their research questions. If you do so, you interdisciplinary research team can be much more than merely the sum of their parts.
Seize opportunities to bring your team together
Make time, opportunities, and space to meet, think, and work together. Remove obstacles that hamper discussions or contact. Schedule team meetings. Create proximity wherever possible, e.g. by shared office spaces. Go to events or conferences together. Give joint presentations and talks. Plan and conduct common field campaigns. Perform commonly designed experiments.
Show as much dedication to the work of your interdisciplinary research team as to the work in your discipline. Never give your teammates the feeling that you are overwhelmed by other, “real“ work. Never give the impression that the interdisciplinary work is a side project you are not fully committed to. This could act as a barrier in contacting and thus involving you.
Show your work to your teammates
Build a mutual understanding of each other’s work. Give each other tours through your lab. Show them your instruments or experimental setups and do demonstrations. This helps team members from other disciplines to picture what you are talking about.
Do all this even if you have seen it a thousand times before yourself. You might not think it is interesting. But for your collaborators it might be the most exciting day of their month.
Learn each other‘s language
Learn each other’s language, nomenclature, and definitions. The same or similar terms can have very different meanings in different disciplines. For this reason, it is of uttermost importance to talk about these terms to get a common understanding within the project team. This aspect has a big implication when considering literature search, for example. Valuable information can be overlooked when using unsuitable search terms or keywords.
Do best practice sharing, especially before planning experiments. Best practices can vary to a great extend between disciplines. You need to consider this when planning joint experiments or field campaigns.
Respect and value each other’s fields
Be open to other approaches and other methodologies even if they seem strange to you. Embrace the range of tools or set of methods that each discipline brings to the table. Do it even if some are at odds with the way you are used to in your discipline. No individual can master all techniques. So having access to this much broader range of possibilities within an interdisciplinary team is always a win.
Avoid the pitfall of valuing one field, typically your own, higher than others. Some natural scientists commonly make this mistake. There is seems to be a tendency of holding highly quantitative areas of science in a higher esteem than more qualitative fields. Do not make this mistake. Show the same level of appreciation and respect to all the members and disciplines in your team.