Interdisciplinarity and research on local issues: evidence from a developing country

TL;DR

This study examines how interdisciplinary research in Colombia relates to local issues, finding that more interdisciplinary work, especially combining disparate fields, tends to focus more on local topics, informing policies to enhance local impact.

Contribution

It provides empirical evidence linking interdisciplinarity with local issue focus in research from a developing country, highlighting the role of distal interdisciplinarity.

Findings

Higher interdisciplinarity correlates with increased focus on Colombian issues.

Distal interdisciplinarity is particularly associated with local research emphasis.

Results inform policies to promote local socio-economic impact of research.

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between interdisciplinarity and research pertaining to local issues. Using Colombian publications from 1991 until 2011 in the Web of Science, we investigate the relationship between the degree of interdisciplinarity and the local orientation of the articles. We find that a higher degree of interdisciplinarity in a publication is associated with a greater emphasis on Colombian issues. In particular, our results suggest that research that combines cognitively disparate disciplines, what we refer to as distal interdisciplinarity, tends to be associated with more local focus of research. We discuss the implications of these results in the context of policies aiming to foster the local socio-economic impact of research in developing countries.