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Crossdisciplinary practices in a specialty of bionanotechnology

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Title: Crossdisciplinary practices in a specialty of bionanotechnology


1
Cross-disciplinary practices in a specialty of
bionanotechnology
SSTNET, Manchester, April 7th 2006
  • Ismael Rafols and Martin Meyer, SPRU
  • University of Sussex, Brighton

2
Interdisciplinarity in the policy discourse
  • Introduction
  • New modes of knowledge production (Gibbons et
    al.)
  • Mode 2 is interdisciplinary (trans-) and
    problem-oriented research.
  • Emerging technologies (biotech,nanotech)
  • viewed as a result of convergence of disciplines

3
Bionanotechnology
  • BBSRC multidisciplinary area that sits at the
    interface between engineering and the biological
    and physical sciences.
  • OECD it covers the interface between physics,
    biology, chemistry and engineering sciences.

However Schummer (2004) found that publishing
practices in nanotech are essentially
mono-disciplinary
4
Research questions
  • Challenging the normative discourses of
  • new modes of knowledge production
  • Is bionanotechnology as
  • cross-disciplinary as it is claimed?
  • In which sense?
  • How is this cross-disciplinarity achieved?

5
2. Conceptual and methodological approach
  • Discipline A social construct
  • Specialty The arena of research
  • Laboratory The repository of tacit knowledge
  • Research-project Sequential and coherent set of
    publications by () same authors.
  • Not a hierarchical (Russian dolls) scheme
  • Multiple overlaps between units at different
    levels

6
How to measure cross-disciplinarity?
  • Need to operationalise concepts proposed by
    sociology of science
  • (J.T. Klein, 1990 Weingart, 2000)
  • Bibliometric indicators
  • Lack of consensus concerning the adequate
    indicators
  • (Porter and Chubin, 1985 Bordons et al. 2004)
  • Multi-dimensional approach
  • (Sanz-Menendez et al., 2001 Grigg et al., 2003)
  • Various aspects Affiliation, researchers
    background, references, citations

7
Operational research questions
  • In which dimensions is Molecular motors
  • cross-disciplinary?
  • Which strategies are pursued in research projects
    in order to garner cross-disciplinarity?

8
Multiple-case study
  • Bionanotechnology is a mixed bag with very
    different research specialties. For meaningful
    comparison we need research projects in one
    specialty of bionanotechnology.
  • Molecular motors
  • study of proteins that use chemical energy to
    generate movement at a subcellular level
  • Selection criteria
  • Important contributions of Japanese researchers
    on the mechanistic dynamics of any of any of the
    biological molecular motors.
  • Data Interviews, publications and other
    published sources.

9
3. Empirical findings
10
Affiliations
11
Background of researchers
Classification Method Question in interview
and publication record Background of each
research Main discipline of practice
12
References
Classification Method Examination of title and
abstract of each reference
13
Instrumentalities
14
Summary empirical findings
15
Knowledge-sourcing strategies
16
4. Conclusions
  • Difference between
  • Social practices (less cross-disciplinary)
  • Cognitive practices (consistently
    cross-disciplinary)
  • A variety of strategies to garner knowledge
  • Recruitment
  • In-house development
  • Collaboration

17
Trade-off between cross-disciplinarity and
integration
  • Cost of integration
  • Coordination and communication extra effort.
  • Attribution of authorship
  • Hypothesis
  • Labs seek the maximum cognitive diversity at the
    minimum cost
  • Various possible successful strategies
  • Some labs try to achieve cognitive diversity
    without going through the costs of social
    cross-disciplinary
  • Other labs engage into social cross-disciplinarity
    managing well the effort for integration.

18
5. Discussion
  • Mode 1 (organic) vs. Mode 2 (policy-driven)
  • cross-disciplinarity
  • (Fujigaki 2002 Bruce et al. 2004)
  • Dynamics found suggest dominance of Mode 1
  • Driven by researchers (not institution)
  • Social aspects of discipline still important

19
Caveats
  • This is an exploratory study.
  • Results will be checked with further bibliometric
    analysis.
  • Just one specialty (invisible college) of
    Bionanotechnology To be compared with results in
    other invisible colleges.
  • Anecdotal observation suggests that dominance of
    Mode 1 or Mode 2 is contingent on the type of
    research
  • even for research communities carrying similar
    research.

20
Acknowledgements
  • Thanks for fruitful comments to Nick von
    Tunzelmann, Jacky Senker and Paul Nightingale.
  • Funded by a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship
    (2006-08) and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation
    (2005).
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