Unpacking the connection between funding configurations and research teams' interdisciplinary practices

[EN] Research funding programs often portray interdisciplinary research as crucial to stimulatescientific creativity, boost innovation, and tackle societal challenges. However, structuralconditions in the organization and governance of science are not typically conducive tothe performance of interdisciplinary research. Although funding programs encourageinterdisciplinarity, there is no systematic evidence on the connection between researchfunding and interdisciplinary practices. In the present study, we investigate whether thereceipt of financial support from diverse funding organizations is more likely to promoteinterdisciplinary research. We employ funding acknowledgment data to assess differentfunding configurations (i.e., diversity of funding sources) and use coauthorship networks toexamine interdisciplinarity in teamwork dynamics. We focus on three European countries(Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands) and two research domains (Food Science andRenewable Energy) over the 11-year period 2009-2019. Panel data analysis reveals a positiveassociation between a diverse funding configuration and interdisciplinary research at theresearch team level. This finding holds for different aspects of funding (e.g., funder origin,number of funders, funder type) and different measures of interdisciplinarity (e.g., variety,balance, disparity). We argue that research teams that respond to multiple funder priorities aremore likely to engage in interdisciplinary research.