Box 6-11. Systemic barriers to interdisciplinarity
The rhetoric of interdisciplinarity has not yet been matched by the reality. In Europe, for example, the President of EURAGRI, at their 2002 Conference on "Placing Agricultural Research at the Heart of Society," identified some key systemic barriers to interdiscipli­nary work in research:
     Interdisciplinary work and professional reality: Interdisciplinary agricultural research is essential, but there are major obstacles. First, the organization, funding and evaluation of research are bi­ased towards work in specific disciplines. Second, co-operative research is time-consuming. In order to climb the career ladder and to receive peer recognition and funding for their research, scientists are often forced to "publish or perish" and to focus their activities on a relatively narrow field. To overcome these obstacles, it is important to address issues such as language, culture, values, and also the methods and traditions of scientific disciplines. It is also essential to remove legal and organizational constraints that hinder EU-scale co-operation.
     Innovative research and research funding: Breakthroughs in science occur more often at the edge of disciplines than in the centre, and the scientists most willing to question traditional ap­proaches and theories are often quite young. Unfortunately in some areas of NAE, their research proposals are rarely ranked high enough to receive funding, because the peers chosen to evaluate research proposals mainly represent the mainstream. This is an obstacle to innovative, more risky research and in the long term it may undermine economic competitiveness. We therefore need to examine how to correct these inbuilt shortcom­ings within the system.
     Analogous difficulties exist  in  relation to  interdisciplinary course design and course approval processes in educational in­stitutions as well as subsequent course delivery mechanisms and learner assessment procedures. Promotion of many such initia­tives is almost completely dependent on a "champion" who has the vision to catalyze a team to design the program proposal. The "champion" is usually sufficiently senior or influential to "guide" the proposal through the approval/funding processes and who is sufficiently well placed to "protect" the delivery team during the early cycles of the program until its (hoped-for) success. Earlier

obstructionists who later acquiesce sometimes even claim that the success was due to the rigorous assessment procedures through which they had forced the original program proposal to pass! The sustainability of such initiatives (no matter how suc­cessful in the minds of the beneficiaries) after the well placed champion moves on or retires is often quite doubtful, in the ab­sence of a pro-active institutional culture oriented to the foster­ing and "active mainstreaming" of such initiatives. Where multiple institutions are involved, the problems and difficulties are greater, often more than proportionately. For younger staff, the personal risks are often high relative to the potential for career advance­ment. This problem could be rectified as was demonstrated in cases of successful collaboration where the young researcher gets his/her name on far more papers than he/she would other­wise, and is typically lead author on the papers where he/she did the most work. Many leading journals now list the contribution of each author to a paper, which facilitates faculty advancement boards. This practice could be broadened to encourage more such collaborations.
     Similar situations exist in the areas of extension/outreach/ development activities, where the successful promotion of inter­disciplinary teamwork, especially involving personnel from differ­ent agencies, is often due to the commitment and dedication of mid-level personnel at local level with the courage to act without formal approval from the top levels of their agencies.
     It is clear, therefore, that a significantly greater level of level of institutional capacity development is necessary whereby AKST institutions acquire/develop an organizational ethos that facili­tates/encourages/promotes various networking developments and encourages active participation of its personnel in such networks, as part of "mainstream" institutional activity attracting parity of esteem for professional recognition and career progres­sion prospects. The "transactions costs" involved in establishing, operating and evaluating partnerships need to be kept reason­able, so that the barriers/obstacles to desirable co-operation can be reasonably surmounted. There is considerable evidence that crossing institutional boundaries can be quite difficult, especially if it also involves crossing ministerial boundaries.