Challenges in Publishing Interdisciplinary Research

Imagine you are a PhD scholar in India, working at the intersection of biotechnology and artificial intelligence to bring about smarter drug delivery systems. The journey is aspirational andte exciting, but you face unique challenges in the process of publishing your work. Multidisciplinary research requires the management of different sets of academic languages and expectations and this complexity is also a source of misunderstanding among reviewers. In fact, as one expert said, “Interdisciplinary research tears down traditional walls but requires that we build bridges that will hold a wide variety of perspectives.”​

Your first problem starts raining down on you within your own team and it’s a tricky one. Each field has its own lingo, ways of doing research, type of research culture. It takes hard work to coalesce these disparate elements into a single clean clear manuscript. You’ll have to create a shared idiom that signals what lies at the heart of your research without disguising its complexity. This involves multiple rounds of revision and communication, or in the words of one researcher, “Communication is key in interdisciplinary teams for a successful publication.”​

Once your paper is prepared, the choice of the journal is very important. Disciplinary high-impact journals tend, for example, to favour studies more focused on a single discipline, providing pediatricians and neurologists the subspecialties of medicine with few papers from the other field. Specialized interdisciplinary journals, however, may not have as high impact factors, but they offer better fitting homes. This balancing act gets even harder due to what Indian academic raters are fond of emphasizing: publications in established disciplinary journals. With that in mind, it’s smarter to aim for journals that really are genuine parents of the interdisciplinary, rather than pretending to be expressing interest in it.

Funding is yet another big challenge. Reviewers and agencies are known to have entrenched disciplinary mindsets that make getting grants for cross-field work difficult. A multi-agency collaborative grant can provide a mechanism to address this, but it does require the development of the proposal so that the disciplines are clearly connected. As one funding advisor put it, “Interdisciplinary proposals have to tell a coherent story that persuade multiple audiences of their worth.” There may also be higher operational costs associated with the shared use of specialized equipment or due to facility usage fees, so it is important to budget appropriately.​

Advice for PhD scholars in India attempting to negotiate these issues: Clear research objectives will help you get your paper accepted: make explicit connections between the disciplines you are drawing on, try for an interdisciplinary journal or an open-access venue, develop cohesive teamwork, get help with literature synthesis and paper polishing. Building collaborative funding opportunities also is important. As a note of finality, remember, “interdisciplinary research is not just walking across lines—it is a transformative journey that expands the horizons of knowledge.” With Anushram Expert Mentoring Your interdisciplinary research journey can transform challenges into milestone and your publications into powerfully impactful contributions to science.