2021 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Impact of Granting Research Fund on Interdisciplinarity of Research Outcomes
| Project/Area Number |
20K22116
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| Research Institution | The University of Tokyo |
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Principal Investigator |
グォン ソクボム 東京大学, 大学院工学系研究科(工学部), 講師 (90872010)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-09-11 – 2022-03-31
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| Keywords | Interdisciplinarity / Research funding / Science policy |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In the first part of this research project, the relationship between the interdisciplinarity of research and its contribution to addressing emerging technological issues within three selected research domains (Nano-enable drug delivery, Synthetic biology, and Autonomous vehicles) was empirically examined by using the metadata of the research publications in each field. This research discovered that interdisciplinary research distinctively contributes to addressing emerging technological topics in each of the three research domains. From this finding, It is argued that more active funding supports for interdisciplinary research need to accelerate the emergence of new technology. This research has been published in Research Evaluation.
In the second part, I examine the role of research funding allocations in the way interdisciplinary research contributes to technological innovation. The empirical analysis is based on the metadata of the 0.7 million journal papers in 2010. My analysis on the correlation between a research paper's interdisciplinarity and its technological impact shows that interdisciplinary research has been more impactful to technology development only when the research was originated from funded projects. This finding suggests that the funding allocation process functions as an institutional instrument for selectively supporting interdisciplinary research that could have a technology impact. This finding was presented in an online workshop with colleagues at Georgia Tech and the research paper is currently under review in a journal.
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