1. Our use of the term “interdisciplinary research” embraces variants of the term such as cross- and multidisciplinary. It also includes “interdependent research ” a relatively new concept connoting work done wholly within one well-defined discipline which in time is exploited with great rewards by another discipline; for example the work done on atomic spin that led to magnetic resonance imaging in medicine.
2. Allocating Federal Funds for Science and Technology (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1995), pp. 41-43This historical discussion is abstracted from a more detailed one in(pp.
3. Specifically those agencies are NASA the U.S. Department of Energy EPA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
4. Program managers typically have responsibility for one discipline or a set of closely related ones. Although that is certainly a very effective structure we also believe that it needs to be complemented by managers of disciplinary programs meeting as a unit that is empowered to make funding decisions on interdisciplinary proposals. This matrix management scheme would help to deal more effectively with proposals whose disciplinarity does not parse neatly.
5. This article is based in part on a talk the authors gave to the board of the W. M. Keck Foundation and we thank the board and officers of the foundation for encouraging us to examine this issue. R.N.Z. also acknowledges that his thinking on the issue of interdisciplinary research was stimulated by his service on the organizing committee for a symposium on the “Nature and Dynamics of Interdisciplinary Research ” which was held at the Wenner-Gren Center in Stockholm Sweden 11 to 14 November 1998.