Integration and Implementation Insights
A global, comprehensive, living toolkit improving research, education and impact on complex real-world problems
A Chinese version of this post is available
What are fake interdisciplinary collaborations and how do they arise?
Fake interdisciplinary collaborations are a form of performative scientific behaviour that claims to be interdisciplinary but lacks knowledge integration across disciplines. There are three social mechanisms that can result in such fake collaborations.
1. Irresponsible project management
Irresponsible project management has two manifestations:
This i2Insights contribution has been retracted.
For an excellent framework on evaluation criteria for transdisciplinary research, see:
Belcher, B. M., Rasmussen, K. E., Kemshaw, M. R. and Zornes, D. A. (2016). Defining and Assessing Research Quality in a Transdisciplinary Context. Research Evaluation, 25, 1–17. (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv025
with an updated and refined version available at: Transdisciplinary-Research-Quality-Assessment-Framework-2.0.pdf.
By Chels Marshall, Rosalie Chapple and Joanne Wilson
What is Indigenous science? How can it be properly recognised? How can we overcome current practices where Indigenous knowledge-holders are generally not regarded as experts, their knowledge is not used as evidence or in decision-making, and non-Indigenous people think Indigenous knowledge needs to be ‘validated’ by Western science?
Lack of recognition of Indigenous data sovereignty raises concerns about the conduct of research – by and for whom? Indigenous cultural knowledge is often used without permission or proper protocols, and is used and appropriated under Western science.
What does successfully honouring Indigenous knowledge look like?
“Our culture is the science.”
By Toby Lowe
Why is the idea that we can measure our impact to understand how well we are performing fundamentally flawed? Why is it impossible to “demonstrate your impact” in complex environments?
Although the idea of measuring impact is seductive, almost all useful social change is achieved as part of a complex system. In other words, your work is a small part of a much larger web of entangled and interdependent activity and social forces.
The systems map of the outcome of obesity, shown in the figure below, illustrates this perfectly – it shows all the factors contributing to people being obese (or not), and all the relationships between those factors.
This is the reality of trying to make impact in the world – your actions are part of a web of relationships – most of which are beyond your control, many of which are beyond your influence, quite a few of which will be completely invisible to you.
By kate harriden
As an Indigenous person, it is draining, infuriating and tedious to consistently encounter recently written academic material that invokes, seemingly uncritically, colonial tropes. Paired with these tropes is usually a mix of arrogance, condescension and ignorance on which notions of ‘western’ superiority are based. I am Totally. Over. It. Not only are these tropes inaccurate and offensive, they allow the colonized researcher to avoid critiquing the impacts of colonization and (un)conscious biases in their work.
If you don’t understand ‘the problem’, chances are you are part of it, so sit down and open your mind as we go through this together. Hopefully the tips provided on how to decolonize your academic writing will start your journey into decolonizing writing.
Learning to recognize colonial writing
Undoubtedly you have read substantially more academic material imbued with colonial values and assumptions than decolonial academic material.
By Jon Warren and Kayleigh Garthwaite
In 1967 Howard Becker posed the question – to academics – “Whose side are we on?”.
Becker was discussing the question during the time of civil rights, the Vietnam war and widespread social change in the US. He sparked a debate about objectivity and value neutrality which had long featured as part of the social sciences’ methodological foundations and which has implications beyond the social sciences for all academics.
What relevance do these ideas have now, in an era when academics and their research are becoming increasingly commodified? Academics are increasingly pressured by their own institutions and fellow professionals to gain more funding, publish more papers and make more impact. Questions of social justice and professional integrity are at risk of being swamped by these forces allied to unscrupulous careerism.
We argue that the question now is not only who academics serve but also who we write for.