Competency-based assessment of academic interdisciplinary research and implication to university management

Abstract

The objective of this study is to contribute to the development of a systematic management method for interdisciplinary research at an academic research institution level. Specifically, co-citation analysis that is a bibliometric approach focusing on citing-cited relation of publications was applied based on established publication and analytical databases in order to express research competence and interdisciplinary characteristics. By using this method, we conducted case studies of stem cell-related research at four universities and identified research competence as synthesized clusters of publications. Then, we demonstrated a research assessment by proposing and introducing key performance indicators and found that a certain degree of interdisciplinarity and internal collaboration may bring about high research productivity. Furthermore, we applied an established portfolio management framework in a business field and clarified differences in the status of research activities among these universities, suggesting the adequateness of applying the management method to academic research. These results suggest that the proposed research assessment and management approaches can provide strong support to facilitating strategic management for academic interdisciplinary research at academic research institutions.