One of COIN’s main goals is to explore the frontiers of interdisciplinarity inspired by astronomy. In this journey, we have also posed questions about the relevance of this goal within the global scenario and its meaning.
Practically, this has translated not only in our insertion in the science of team science community but also in our discussion group focused on the interdisciplinary role in recent years within the astronomical community.
The first outcome of this discussion has been reported in a recent research note. Using arXiv data from more than 3.8 million papers, the group studied how astronomers reached out to other communities in the last decade. Results show an impressive and steady increase in citations from astronomy papers to computer science and statistics, which increased 15 fold in the seven years. We also see a step increase in citations to general relativity, coinciding with the first detection of gravitational waves.
This result confirms the general perception of increasingly more resources being devoted to multidisciplinarity efforts within astronomy. Hence, we expect this note to be a valuable resource for decision-making plans for our community.
The natural next step is to gather enough data to understand the reverse trend and study how astronomy impacts other fields or how much they cite us.
The discussion group is active. We invite all COIN members interested in the subject to join the efforts, which will continue in the second semester of 2022.
Full citation: Delli Veneri et al., 2022, Res. Notes AAS 6 113
- Michele Delli-Veneri, University of Naples Federico II - Italy
- Rafael S. de Souza, Shanghai Astronomical Observatory - China
- Alberto Krone-Martins, University of California Irvine - USA
- Emille E. O. Ishida - CNRS, France
- Maria Luiza Linhares Dantas, Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center - Poland
- Noble Kennamer, University of California Irvine - USA