We are excited to share some sneak peeks of our findings with you, from our research and interviews with practitioners self-declaring interdisciplinary centres embedded in Universities, public administration, or being independent entities.
In this post, we will share about the ITDR barriers:
First #ITDR Barrier: #Communication
“Language, terminology and communication issues” (Bruce, 2004, Fam et al., 2020). As identified from the literature, it is not surprised that communication is one of the challenges due to the difference of #terminologies from each #disciplines.
Second #ITDR Barrier: #Structural
The #structural barrier encompasses the following: #financial, research #policies and #evaluation criteria, education, and also the most identified barrier by the respondents. “The #dominant structures within universities make it difficult to conduct #interdisciplinary research” (Golde & Gallagher, 1999, Langfeld and Scordato, 2016)
Third #ITDR Barrier: #Background
Many of our respondents do resonate with the hassles. “Involves people from #disparate backgrounds, it may take extra time and difficulties” (National Academy of Sciences, 2005, Van Rijnsoever and Hessels, 2011). But we do also believe that this is what makes the study even more interesting and fruitful!
Fourth #ITDR Barrier: #Fundings
Another perpetuate problem that every project faces: #fundings! However, it is even challenging for #ITD researches, as suggested by Cresco in 2008, “#Interdisciplinary #research is usually regarded as harder to #evaluate in terms of funding #proposals”.
Fifth #ITDR Barrier: #Time
We will also need to agree that we spend more time coordinating between different sectors, “Barriers to expanding beyond #traditional #disciplinary #research structures include extended #time requirements” (Morse, 2007)
Sixth #ITDR Barrier: #Individual #Inertia
Most people prefer to stay within the comfort zone. Moving forward to other factors beside those that stated in literature, many of our respondents also claimed that #individualinertia is one of the #ITDR barriers.
Seventh #ITDR barriers: #Needs and #discrepant activities of individuals
We could not deny that #ITDR is #challenging because of the needs and discrepant activities of individuals. As we involve more parties from different #disciplines, it is difficult to cater for everyone’s preference all at once.
“On the financial aspects, it’s very challenging because we are actually doing something which is quite unusual. (…) It was quite interesting from our environment, but also for our environment, so they not really understood what we are doing and why we are doing this. It has been a big challenge and it’s still a big challenge from the financial point of view because we are trying to sell our products or services and this is not really well understood by most of our clients, so it's always an education work as well.”
The #ITDR journey is never an easy one, but it is also never a boring one! Let’s talk more to continue to discover treasures along the journey!