Interdisciplinarity in environmental technology applications - Examining knowledge interaction between physics and chemistry research teams

This paper examines interdisciplinarity in science-based environmental technology applications including nanoscience applications in solar cell technology and sensor technology for pollution monitoring (of for example vehicle exhaust gas). Data and methods include analysis of co-authorship links, citation data combined with content analysis and interviews with researchers active in the field. Interdisciplinarity of science and technology areas has been analysed at the level of researcher affiliation, journal type and keywords. In addition to these measures of interdisciplinarity, this study acknowledges the importance to recognise the character of links. This includes both their content and the context that generates interdisciplinary links between research teams trough citations or co-authorships interaction. To illustrate this, the knowledge networks of two research teams from the same university are examined and visualised using bibliographic coupling and co-authorship networks. The findings show that although there are no direct co-authorship links between the two research teams in the dataset analysed, links were identified though bibliographic coupling. In examining the context generating a shared reference between the research teams, one of the teams show citation patterns described here as "interdisciplinary outlook" compared to the "intradisciplinary magnifier" pattern of the other research team.