Effect of Scientific Collaboration on Interdisciplinarity in Climate Change From a Scientometric Perspective

Abstract

Insights into the interdisciplinary response to scientific collaboration remain scarce in interdisciplinary fields. The present work focuses on the effect of scientific collaboration on disciplinary diversity in the field of climate change using multiple statistical methods. The results show that research collaboration at the author and country/region levels has significantly positive effects on variety and DIV (an integrated diversity indicator), although these effects are limited. Additionally, the associations between the values of variety, disparity, and DIV and the number of departments are significantly positive, and similar results are found regarding relationships between these indicators and the number of countries/regions at the country/region and integrated levels. However, scientific collaboration has a negative effect on the balance of references at all levels. This study can improve our understanding of how scientific collaboration affects the multidimensional aspects of interdisciplinary research, and facilitate cross-disciplinary collaboration in the future.