In academia, excellence should always be rewarded. But what happens when the most qualified candidate does not follow the strict boundaries of a single discipline? Can he or she really be penalized for being “too multidisciplinary”?
It is precisely on this paradox that the research recently published in Organization Science, entitled A New Take on the Categorical Imperative: Gatekeeping, Boundary Maintenance, and Evaluation Penalties in Science (Riccardo Fini, Julien Jourdan, Markus Perkmann, Laura Toschi) is based.
In recent years, multidisciplinarity has become crucial in addressing complex societal challenges: from climate change to the pandemic, today’s problems require expertise involving different areas of human knowledge. However, researchers working on multiple disciplinary fronts often face invisible but powerful barriers: professional evaluations.
The dominant theory suggests that candidates with an “unfocused” academic identity-that is, those who publish work in several disciplines-are penalized because examiners consider them less competent or difficult to evaluate. Instead, this study proposes a new explanation: the need for examiners to maintain disciplinary boundaries. Examiners, in fact, are not only judges of competence, but prove to be true “gatekeepers” of the social boundaries of academic disciplines.
The research analyzed data from over 55,000 applications focusing on Italy’s national scientific qualification process, which allows scholars to be appointed as associate or full professors. The findings? Multidisciplinary candidates, particularly those with excellent academic careers, suffer a greater penalty than those who follow more traditional paths.
Why does this happen? Multidisciplinary candidates, especially high-profile ones, are perceived as a threat to the identity of the discipline itself. Examiners fear that, once admitted, these “outsiders” might change the direction of the discipline, introducing new ideas or approaches that would destabilize its distinctive core. As a result, even candidates with publications of the highest quality are sometimes excluded if they do not fit neatly into the disciplinary canons.
It was then found that the penalty is particularly strong in circumscribed and highly distinctive disciplines, which are those in which examiners feel even more tied to a rigid definition of their field. In contrast, broader or less specific disciplines tend to be more open to candidates who cross disciplinary boundaries.
This trend could have important implications: limiting the access of multidisciplinary researchers could slow down innovation and scientific progress. Think of fields such as computational biology or data science, which arise precisely from the coming together of different disciplines. If researchers working in these areas are penalized, we risk blocking the development of new approaches and the leveraging of new solutions.
So, while there is a need to preserve the integrity and identity of the disciplines, there is also a need to find a way to provide space for those who bring new perspectives: accreditation processes should be reformed to balance the keeping of disciplinary boundaries with the need for innovation.
Promoting diversity in evaluation committees by including examiners with less typical profiles or from different disciplines could be one solution. In addition, establishing evaluation criteria that take into account the value of multidisciplinary research, beyond rigid categorizations, would make it possible to reward not only competence but also the ability to innovate. Science progresses by breaking down boundaries, not erecting them. In a world in need of innovative solutions, academia must find new ways to reward those who challenge the boundaries of knowledge, not close the door to them.
