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Measurement of Interdisciplinary Research

The nature of Universitas Diponegoro as an excellent research university, along with its Faculties, Schools, and research units, makes it inherently interdisciplinary and contributes significantly to Undip’s academic reputation. With 11 Faculties (Engineering, Social Sciences, Law, Humanities, Fisheries and Marine Sciences, Agricultural and Animal Sciences, Economics and Business, Medical Sciences, Public Health, Science and Mathematics, and Psychology) and 2 Schools (Vocational Studies and Multidisciplinary Studies), Undip has adopted an interdisciplinary approach in its education and research.

The School of Postgraduate coordinates multidisciplinary postgraduate programs, including Environmental Sciences, Information Systems, Epidemiology, and Energy Studies. Research activities at Undip are managed by the Institute of Research and Community Services (Lembaga Penelitian dan Pengabdian Masyarakat-LPPM). Research at Undip does not rely solely on a mono-disciplinary approach but is designed as a research consortium that involves cross-faculty, departmental, and program-based collaborations or research groups.

Through interdisciplinary research, it is expected that research outcomes will benefit not only individual faculties but multiple faculties and schools within Undip. Research on Sustainable Development Goals is also encouraged to foster collaboration among experts from different faculties. This commitment is reflected in Undip’s research guidelines (Buku Panduan Penelitian dan Pengabdian Masyarakat, pages 12–13).

The success of interdisciplinary research at Undip can be evaluated through various metrics, including research funding, research effectiveness, visibility, and overall impact.

Research Guide

Some key measures of interdisciplinary research success:

1. Interdisciplinary Research Effectiveness

The effectiveness of interdisciplinary research at UNDIP can be measured through various indicators, including co-authorship and citations in high-impact journals spanning multiple disciplines, invention disclosures, patents, or licenses for applications that impact multiple domains. Additional metrics include the number of grants awarded relative to those submitted and the annual volume of interdisciplinary publications.

Here the results of publications by Undip in 2022-2024

  • Research productivity

The publication outputs produced by Universitas Diponegoro for period 2021 till 2024 is 7571 documents, where interdisciplinary subjects contributed to 50-60% of the total publications.  Figure 1 shows that the interdisciplinary research outputs increase 28-30% per year.

Figure 2 shows the interdisciplinary research output (environmental sciences, earth and planetary sciences ) contributes majorly in the research outputs.
(Source: Scopus.com)

  • Collaboration research

The measure of collaboration among researchers cross-faculties/school (Interdisciplinary research) is reflected by number of publication collaborations in the period 2021-2024. According to data from Scival.com, the international collaboration for interdisciplinary research is in the range of 17-30%, national collaboration is 25-40%, while collaboration among Undip faculty and school is between 25-42.5%.

Figure 3. Geographical collaboration of interdisciplinary research outputs from Diponegoro University between 2021-2024

  • Interdisciplinary Research in SDGs

Interdisciplinary research plays a crucial role in promoting the SDGs within the university’s research activities. Analyzing Diponegoro University’s publications by SDG, we find that the majority are concentrated in SDGs 3, 7, 11, and 12, which correspond to Good Health and Well-Being, Affordable and Clean Energy, Sustainable Cities and Communities, and Responsible Consumption and Production, respectively. These four SDGs align with the interdisciplinary scope of various faculties within the university, particularly the School of Postgraduate Studies, which oversees multidisciplinary programs such as Environmental Sciences, Energy, and Epidemiology. Therefore, interdisciplinary research serves as a key driver of research publications at the university. Figure 4 below illustrates the research publications by SDG from 2021 to 2024, based on SciVal data.

 

2. Interdisciplinary Research Funding

To support interdisciplinary science research, Universitas Diponegoro secures funding which allocated from:

  • Internal funding, the funding was coordinated by research office at UNIDP level and at faculty level. The allocated budget in the faculty/school is Rp. 10.000.000 per staff/year, and with total of 1900 staff, the university allocates 19 Billion IDR/year. Furthermore, the university also allocates 24 Billion IDR which was managed by LPPM Undip. LPPM Undip has designed competitive research scheme which enable staff to apply the grants.
  • External funding, the funding from external sources, such as Ministry of Research, Technology and Higher Education, Indonesia Research and Innovation agency (BRIN), LPDP, etc. The external was also through collaboration scheme with national and international partners, both academia or industries. The example of the interdisciplinary research grants from external was Solar power desalination unit for supply fresh water in remote area in 2023 by School of multidisciplinary studies (postgraduate studies). The grant was provided by KONEKSI through collaboration with Australian National University for 350,000 AUD.

3. Interdisciplinary Visibility and Impact

Visibility and impact are assessed through mentions of the unit in press/media, or number of citations of the research output. The citation shows the impact of research output to the society.  The total number of citations (FWCI) for interdisciplinary research has been increasing during the last three years in line with the total number of overall research in the university (Fig 5) . The FWCI for the last three years shows 0.8-1.2 for all interdisciplinary research.

Assessing the wider societal impact of interdisciplinary research involves evaluating its contributions beyond academia, particularly in the mention of Undip in media/press. This can be monitored also via Undip scholar website (scholar.undip.ac.id) as shown by Figure 6