These are the slides from my talk at the GISCience 2016 conference. There is more information on my blog, but the abstract is: Over the past 25 years, I have experienced an inside track view of two interdisciplinary research fields: Geographical Information Science (GIScience) and Citizen Science. Over that period, I was also involved in about 20 multidisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary projects. As a result, I also found myself evaluating and funding x-disciplinary projects. On the basis of these experiences, I’d argue that Interdisciplinarity is always hard, risky, require compromises, accommodations, listening, and making mistakes. The excitement from the outputs and outcomes does not always justify the price. Frequently, there is no-follow on project – it’s been too exhausting. Considering the project level challenges, viewing interdisciplinary areas of studies emerging is especially interesting. You can notice how concepts are being argued and agreed on. You can see what is inside and what is outside, and where the boundary is drawn. You can see how methodologies, jargon, acceptable behaviour, and modes of operations get accepted or rejected – and from the inside, you can nudge the field and sometimes see the impact of your actions. GIScience was born as an interdisciplinary field of study, and the period of consolidation that I have seen was supposed to lead to stability and growth. This did not happen. Take any measure that you like: size of conferences, papers – or even the argument if the field deserve a Wikipedia page. Something didn’t work. In contrast, Citizen Science is already attracting to its conferences audience in the many hundreds – the Citizen Science Association include 4000 (free) members, The European Citizen Science Association 180 (paid) – and that is in the first 2 years since they’ve established. In the talk, I explore the way in which interdisciplinary projects and fields work, highlight the similarities and differences, and suggest the issues that have led to the outcomes that we see today

1. Has GIScience Lost its
Interdisciplinary Mojo?
Mojo - a magic charm
or spell. Commonly:
sex appeal or talent.

2. Plan
• GIScience & Citizen Science as
interdisciplinary fields
• X-disciplinarity: disciplinary, multi, cross,
inter, trans
• Lessons from interdisciplinary projects
• GIScience and Citizen Science:
comparison and speculation
• New avenues for collaborations –
examples from citizen science

4. At the beginning …

7. Total number of publications with the
keywords GIS or GIScience, based on a
Scopus query for the years 1991 through
2015, executed in July 2015.
Egenhofer, M.J., et al. 2016 Contributions of GIScience over the Past Twenty Years. In Advancing Geographic Information Science: The Past and Next Twenty
Years, p.9.

9. GIScience and Citizen Science as
interdisciplinary fields
• “GIS software is hard to use unless you have
sufficient knowledge of geography,
cartography, and database management
systems…” (Traynor & Williams 1995) – and
also statistics, algorithms development,
problem domain knowledge (ecology,
hydrology, transport)
• Citizen Science require knowledge from
science engagement and outreach,
education, volunteering studies, statistics,
geographical analysis, and problem domain
knowledge (ecology, astrophysics, brain
science, digital humanities)
Traynor, C. and M. G. Williams (1995) Why are Geographic Information Systems Hard to Use?
CHI'95.

10. BUT WHAT DOES
‘INTERDISCIPLINARY FIELD’
MEAN?

11. Disciplinary research
Clipart by barnheartowl, jetxee at openclipart.org
?
“Big” research
issues
Journals, books,
conferences

12. Multidisciplinary research
?

13. Cross-disciplinary research
?

14. interdisciplinary research
?

15. Transdisciplinary research
?

16. Another way to think of this…
Source: Alexander Refsum Jensenius
http://www.arj.no/2012/03/12/disciplinarities-2/

17. LESSONS FROM ENGAGING IN
INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH

18. 1. Get them young & hungry
• Interdisciplinary project led by a team of
professors with disciplinary track record ==
multi-disciplinary project
• Funding Early Career Researchers is the most
effective way to encourage interdisciplinary
research
• Career stage & interdisciplinarity:
– PhD – extremely risky, guidance required!
– Assistant professor/Postdoc – very risky, but
manageable
– Associate professor – possible, risk that already
gpt stuck in a discipline
– Full professor – difficult, unless they’ve done
interdisciplinary research

20. 2. Being undermined, unintentionally
• Each discipline will have its own notion of
truth, and how to get to it
• Examples: Number of participants,
validity of sampling, randomised control
trials, size
• Assumptions about how another discipline
is doing things can lead to statement that
will sound as undermining expertise and
knowledge

21. Physicists & participatory
research

22. 3. Being undermined, intentionally
• X-disciplinary proposal are evaluated by
experts from different fields, and no
matter how much they are told to focus
their comments on their discipline, they
will comment on other aspects
• X-disciplinary proposal evaluators can
assess the novelty in their area, not the
overall, reducing the likelihood of
‘outstanding’ mark, hence no funding

23. Evaluation feedback
• 2007 UCL Research Challenges Board: The
reason why the project seemed so high risk
…. is it clear that even if everything works
there would be real value from these sorts
of devices? You use the example that the
forest people might be able to tell if there
were poachers in the area. Yet can that
really be shown? Is there any evidence that
illiterate people can use maps, digital or
otherwise?
• 2016 EPSRC: The use of crowdsourcing for
data was seen as an important idea … but it
was not so clear as to how the data will
be used

24. 4. Beware of ‘the disciplinary scrounger’
• Interdisciplinary research open up new tools
and methodologies for the research team
• Opportunity for using resources in a
researcher own discipline, and use resources
from other teams to advance their research
• Not necessarily malicious – from the
researcher perspective, it is exactly a
demonstration of interdisciplinary
contribution

25. 5. Have a common narrative, early
• A common narrative (e.g. Logic Model,
detailed project plan) help in ensuring
that everyone know what is the common
goal of the project, agree on key common
outcomes and communication, while
allowing for a disciplinary latitude

26. 6. Assume mutual misunderstanding
• The same term can have different meanings:
– Scale (Anthropology): individual, household, society
– Scale (Urban design): street, neighbourhood, city
– Scale (Cartography): city, neighbourhood, street,
house
• Consider the term ‘field’ in GIScience – database?
Data model? Object in agricultural application?
• These are easy – the subtle things that are taken
for granted by each discipline are hard…

27. Difficulty is that people want to see the suburbs as just one
thing
Created by Kate Jones & Sam Griffiths

28. 7. The publications that are written
• Complex, and delicate negotiations on
authorship practices and contribution
– Anthropology expect a single authored book
of original material. Computer Science
expect rapid, short and multi-authored
conference papers.
• Writing frequently expose
misunderstanding and
ambiguities

29. 8. Publications that will never be
written
• Researchers live in disciplines, even if
they work in x-disciplinary projects
• Career, promotion, visibility, recognition –
all depend on disciplinary practices
• Result: disciplinary papers and outputs
are written first, x-disciplinary outputs
left to a later stage – and then the
project ends
• Dependency on voluntary investment of
multiple contributors

30. 9. It’s about coffee and lunch breaks
(and going out together)

31. FROM PROJECTS TO
RESEARCH FIELDS

32. We’re on the road to…
Citizen Science
• Emergent research
agenda (e.g. data
quality, Motivations &
incentives, Interaction…)
• Emerging lose research
centres, associations,
special issues
GIScience
• Research agenda
• Core curriculum
• Body of knowledge
• Core research centres
• Top down attempt at
directing an emerging
discipline? Openness to
emerging opportunities
(e.g. VGI in UCGIS Research
Priorities 2004)

33. Inclusiveness
Citizen Science
• Applications in multiple
scientific disciplines, so
conference, projects,
publications are going
after inclusiveness
(tensions exist)
GIScience
• Early intensive
inclusiveness

34. Science / Practice
Citizen Science GIScience

35. Science / Practice
Citizen Science
• Addressing emerging
problems, close
connection to
practitioners
• Practitioners raise issues
that lead to foundational
questions
GIScience
• Basic science – principles
and laws
• Some disdain to applied
practice

36. Coherence & focus
Citizen Science
• Continued discussion
about the
appropriateness of the
name:
– Public Participation in
Scientific Research
– Civic Science
– Birding, Amateur
Astronomy, zooits
GIScience
• Early naming provided
coherence, positions,
description of what it is
that people need to
know to be part of it
• Importance
of ‘key
phrases’

37. FINDING INTERDISCIPLINARY
OPPORTUNITIES

38. Citizen Science & GIScience
• Longevity of VGI data sources
• Scale
• Challenging datasets (complexity,
ontology, heterogeneity)
• Critical issues (climate change,
biodiversity)
• Usability Challenges
• Opportunities for new interdisciplinary
collaborations

39. Longevity of VGI
• GIScience awaken to crowdsourcing in
2007
• Citizen Science can provide
datasets that go back 50
years and more, and in
digital forms sources such as
eBird (2002):
provide longitudinal analysis

40. Scale

41. Challenging datasets
• GBIF already contains over
500,000,000 records

42. Critical issues
Source: Helen Roy (CEH)

43. Usability Challenges

44. • Interdisciplinary is challenging:
emotionally, practically, and in terms of
funding
• Interdisciplinary is highly satisfying:
rethinking aspects that are taken for
granted, learning new ways of seeing the
world, making new friendships
• GIScience inbuilt interdisciplinarity
should be used to increase its reach
GIScience & interdisciplinary
Rickles, P. & Ellul, C. (2014): A Preliminary Investigation into the Challenges of Learning GIS in
Interdisciplinary Research, Journal of Geography in Higher Education

45. Acknowledgement
This talk would not be possible without the
generosity of the many people and
communities that we have worked with
over the years…

46. Acknowledgement
… and the funders, project partners, and sponsors that
we’ve worked with (and will work with in the future)