Some Researchers Do, Some Researchers Don’t: Reflections on Interdisciplinarity and Digital Social Research

Abstract

In this paper, two social scientists and two computing scientists reflect upon five years of collaboration on the PolicyGrid I and II projects (an ESRC-funded Digital Social Research node), undertaking research that seeks to understand the activities of interdisciplinary teams of social, environmental and natural scientists working on policy-related topics in the human-environment interactions field and to support these activities through the development of web-based research collaboration tools utilising Semantic Web technologies.

Keywords: interdisciplinarity, collaboration, social science, Semantic Web, virtual research environment