Planting and nurturing interdisciplinary collaborations: a high-stakes, high-reward endeavour

It is almost a century ago that the word ‘interdisciplinary’ has been coined, motivated by concerns not dissimilar to those presented to us in the case of the director of a ‘competence center for plant science’. Disciplinary specialization, but also other obstacles or – implicit- assumptions about interdisciplinarity may hinder collaboration across disciplines, even if they are not always warranted. Moreover, often academics are not aware of the potential advantages that such collaborations can yield and which might outweigh their perceived risks. This may hold even more for transdisciplinary collaborations, in which extra-academic stakeholders join an interdisciplinary team of researchers (Keestra, Uilhoorn, & Zandveld, 2022).
In the present case, the director of a competence center for plant science should be commended as they are explicitly promoting interdisciplinary research, education and outreach programs in various ways. They mention a 10-year-old interdisciplinary PhD fellowship program, a call for interdisciplinary proposals connecting scientific and societal issues and more. Yet they also express some frustration about the amount of time these efforts require and the tension between fundamental plant science and connecting this with more applied and societal matters, for example. This frustration is not uncommon, though, raising the question what can be done to mitigate it? Below, I will respond to this case by addressing four topics or tensions that struck me most:
1. Should we start with topics or with people? The author describes how their plant science colleagues have already gathered some experience in collaborations with colleagues from the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Yet these collaborations are apparently discontinued and the director tells they are ‘challenged in finding topics and experts’ in the SSH.
2. How to get the collaboration started and deliver some returns? The director reports that their colleagues needed special tools and workshop formats to get this collaboration off the ground – even though these are time consuming. In addition, for early career researchers such collaborations are also riskier as they still need to establish themselves within a particular discipline.
3. Is experience in interdisciplinary research sufficient, or do you need special preparation? The author writes that they ‘did not consider training the Principal Investigators’. Nonetheless, the director shares how most plant scientists ask them how to find SSH experts, implying that they do have difficulties in identifying potential collaborators elsewhere.
4. Can scientists who are performing fundamental research also engage in interdisciplinary collaborations? Since such collaborations would probably include value-laden contributions, benefit from the expertise of indigenous peoples and are more geared towards applications, according to the current case, they seem to distract far from this fundamental science level. Or should this opposition between fundamental and interdisciplinary research be reconsidered?