How interdisciplinary is sustainability research? Analyzing the structure of an emerging scientific field |
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Authors: | Ethan D Schoolman Jeremy S Guest Kathleen F Bush Andrew R Bell |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, University of Michigan, LSA Building, Room 3001, 500 S. State St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;(2) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Michigan, 1351 Beal Ave., 19 EWRE, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;(3) Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, SPH Tower, 1415 Washington Heights, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;(4) Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Earth Institute, Columbia University, 103 Tree Ring Lab., 61 Route 9W, P.O. Box 1000, Palisades, NY 10964, USA; |
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Abstract: | Sustainability research is expected to incorporate concepts, methods, and data from a diverse array of academic disciplines.
We investigate the extent to which sustainability research lives up to this ideal of an interdisciplinary field. Using bibliometric
data, we orient our study around the “tripartite model” of sustainability, which suggests that sustainability research should
draw from the three “pillars” of the environmental, economic, and social sciences. We ask three questions: (i) is sustainability
research truly more interdisciplinary than research generally, (ii) to what extent does research grounded in one pillar draw
on research from the other two, and (iii) if certain disciplines or pillars are more interdisciplinary than others, then what
explains this variation? Our results indicate that sustainability science, while more interdisciplinary than other scientific
fields, falls short of the expectations inherent in the tripartite model. The pillar with the fewest articles published on
sustainability—economics—is also the most integrative, while the pillar with the most articles—environmental sciences—draws
the least from outside disciplines. But interdisciplinarity comes at a cost: sustainability research in economics and the
social sciences is centered around a relatively small number of interdisciplinary journals, which may be becoming less valued
over time. These findings suggest that, if sustainability research is to live up to its interdisciplinary ideals, researchers
must be provided with greater incentives to draw from fields other than their own. |
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