Evaluating interdisciplinary research: Disparate outcomes for topic and knowledge base

Area of Science:

• Scientific publishing
• Research evaluation
• STEM disciplines

Background:

• Interdisciplinary research is crucial for global challenges.
• Concerns exist regarding scientific journals' selection against interdisciplinary work.
• Previous studies focused on published paper outcomes, not acceptance probabilities.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how different dimensions of interdisciplinarity affect manuscript acceptance rates.
• To determine if topic and knowledge-base interdisciplinarity are evaluated differently by journals.
• To examine the moderating effects of dimension alignment and journal type on acceptance.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of 128,950 manuscript submissions across 62 STEM journals.
• Distinction between topic interdisciplinarity (title/abstract) and knowledge-base interdisciplinarity (references).
• Statistical modeling to assess the impact of interdisciplinarity dimensions on acceptance probability.

Main Results:

• Knowledge-base interdisciplinarity positively correlates with acceptance probability (0.9 pp per 1SD increase).
• Topic interdisciplinarity negatively correlates with acceptance probability (1.2 pp per 1SD decrease).
• Topic interdisciplinarity penalties are reduced when knowledge-base interdisciplinarity is high or journals are designated as "interdisciplinary".

Conclusions:

• Journal evaluation of interdisciplinary research is nuanced, not uniformly biased.
• Distinguishing between topic and knowledge-base interdisciplinarity is critical for understanding acceptance.
• Manuscript alignment with journal scope and audience influences evaluation outcomes.