Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that interdisciplinarity (ID) is very diverse. Our contribution is a demonstration that considerable diversity exists also on the level of understandings of ID that researchers working in the same ID field express. Specifically, we analyse qualitatively, building on the method of culture contrast, six interviews with researchers working in computational linguistics and language technology in Estonia. We identify six understandings of ID expressed by the interviewees: centred on an ID method; a disciplinary method in an ID field; an ID way of seeing and thinking; ID education; ID interests; one’s field as naturally ID. We show how understandings of ID are significant for analysing research practice, since they are involved in how researchers form a positive picture of themselves and their colleagues. We also show how an awareness of different understandings of ID is useful for discussing the significance of integration in ID.
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Throughout the article,’ID’ stands for both’interdisciplinarity’ and’interdisciplinary’.
The reason for not distinguishing them is the conviction that although on the theoretical level the distinction may be drawn, on the practical level it is vague (Muischnek et al., 2012, p. 67).
Throughout the paper, we use several notions – understandings, accounts, characterisations, senses etc. of ID – to refer to how the ID researchers interviewed talk about what makes them and their research ID.
We are grateful to the reviewer who invited us to clarify this point.
By now, it has been superseded by the programme “Estonian Language Technology 2018–2027” whose purpose is “… to ensure that the basic components of Estonian language technology comply with good international standards and that the Estonian language technology can be used by a broader target group. To achieve this purpose, new language technology applications will be created with the help of the program, the quality of existing applications will be increased and implemented in as many areas as possible, in the private, public and third sectors.” (Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Estonia, 2018, p. 2).
We are grateful to the reviewer who prompted us to deal with this question.
Salmela and Mäki (2018, p. 47) also discuss briefly some positive disciplinary emotions that can arise in successful ID collaborations, as well as the possibility of the emergence of positive ID emotions. There are some commonalities between this and our discussion of the positive perceptions of oneself and colleagues in an ID field.
In accordance with the topic of our interviews and our analysis, in this section we discuss a specific subset of challenges: those that focus on ID and argue that ID is possible without integration. Other ways to question the central importance of integration for research that involves two or more disciplines are possible. For example, Julie Mennes (2020) accepts that ID necessarily involves integration. She then proposes an account of the non-integrative non-ID form of research involving more than one discipline – multidisciplinarity – with the aim to challenge the received view of multidisciplinarity as less valuable than ID.
Earlier, we elaborated why we see this field as successful. It is important to stress that in this paper we do not have the aim of explaining why the field of language technology and computational linguistics is successful. We treat its successfulness as the starting point in the investigation where our aim is to describe the characteristics that make it ID in the eyes of the researchers. Analysing what factors contribute to this success and what the relative role of integration (or the lack of it) is would require a separate paper.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the reviewers and the editors for helpful feedback.
This study was supported by the Estonian Research Council (PUT 732 and PRG 462), the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (IUT 20-5), and by the European Union European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies).
Funding
This study was supported by the Estonian Research Council (PUT 732 and PRG 462), the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research (IUT 20-5), and by the European Union European Regional Development Fund (Centre of Excellence in Estonian Studies).
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All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) contributed to the study conception and design. The interviews were conducted by Katrin Velbaum. All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) contributed to the data analysis. The first drafts of Introduction, Section 6 and conclusion were written by Jaana Eigi-Watkin. The first draft of Section 2 was written by Endla Lõhkivi. The first draft of Section 3 was written by Katrin Velbaum. All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) contributed to the writing of the first drafts of Section 4 and Section 5. All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) commented on all sections of the previous versions of the manuscript. The final revisions were performed by Jaana Eigi-Watkin. All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) read and approved the final manuscript. All authors (Jaana Eigi-Watkin, Endla Lõhkivi, Edit Talpsepp, Katrin Velbaum) contributed to the revisions of the manuscript in response to the reviewers’ and the editors’ feedback.
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The interviews analysed in the paper were conducted in 2015. Our research conducting the interviews, analysing them and writing this paper has been guided by the Code of Ethics of Estonian Scientists (https://www.akadeemia.ee/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/code_ethics2002-3.pdf), the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (https://etag.ee/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Code_Conduct_ResearchIntegrity.pdf) and, since 2017, the Estonian Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (https://www.eetika.ee/en/ethics-estonia/estonian-code-conduct-research-integrity). We conducted the interviews with the volunteers who did not belong to any vulnerable group(s). Taking part in the interviews posed low risk for them and was not unduly burdensome for them. Based on these factors and taking into account the ethical guidelines above and the laws, regulations and good research practice in Estonia, an approval from a human research ethics committee was not necessary for our research.
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All interviewees took part in the interview voluntarily. Before the interview, the interviewee was provided with an informed consent form, describing the aims of our project and our approach to data handling: the original data were stored securely on the University of Tartu servers; only the interviewer and the transcribers had access to the original interviews; the interviews were pseudonymised before they were given to the other members of the research group; and only the members of the research group had access to these pseudonymised versions. The interviewee confirmed that they were giving free informed consent to participation in our research by signing the form.
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Since our research involves qualitative data that cannot be fully anonymised (only pseudonymised), we do not see sharing of them as ethically permissible.
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Eigi-Watkin, J., Velbaum, K., Talpsepp, E. et al. How interdisciplinary researchers see themselves: plurality of understandings of interdisciplinarity within a field and why it matters. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 14, 13 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-024-00572-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-024-00572-x