Interdisciplinarity and Transdisciplinarity: Keyword Meanings for Collaboration Science and Translational Medicine - Abstract
The keywords of this special issue–collaboration science and translational medicine–appear frequently in conjunction with two other terms–“Interdisciplinarity” (ID) and “Transdisciplinarity” (TD). Interdisciplinarity is linked with collaboration and translational medicine because both integrate insights from multiple disciplines. Transdisciplinarity, in turn, is linked with new frameworks for health and wellness that transcend disciplinary and interdisciplinary inputs, involvement of stakeholders outside the academy in team-based research, and translation of scientific findings into new protocols and treatments. ID and TD, however, are too often buzzwords. Even when authoritative definitions are cited, their relationship to other terms is often unclear. Understanding the relationship of the four keywords is complicated by the growing complexity of boundary crossing today, involving not only disciplines but also occupational professions, interdisciplinary fields, and expertise outside the academy in civil society and the private and public sectors. The research community in translational medicine and epidemiology is well aware of this complexity, since its members work in contexts of basic science as well as preclinical, clinical, and epidemiological settings and in health outcomes. This investigation is aimed at more informed use of the terms ID and TD in collaboration science and translational medicine. It tracks the history of their intersections, overlaps and differences, and roles in the emerging areas of team science, convergence, and applied integrative research. Four major implications follow for translational medicine: benchmarking the heightened importance of the field in the history of interdisciplinarity, philosophical differences in the goals of ID and TD, etymological shifts in keywords, and recommendations for institutional change.