Cultural barriers to interdisciplinary research collaboration: evidence from Australia, Nature.com, 11 June 2025
Interdisciplinary research collaboration has been linked to improvements in innovation, creativity, and research impact. While differences between research cultures—especially between science and arts—are often cited as a barrier to interdisciplinary collaboration, there is actually little empirical evidence to confirm this phenomenon. In this study, responses to a survey of academics and interviews with senior university leaders at a large research university in Australia reveal a significant and asymmetrical cultural divide between respondents in science-based and arts-based disciplines, in that science-based researchers expressed reluctance to collaborate with arts-based researchers but the reverse was not found to be true.
