Citation

McClure RJ. Inj. Prev. 2018; 24(4): 249.

Affiliation

School of Rural Medicine, University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia rmcclure@une.edu.au.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/injuryprev-2018-042906

PMID

30037905

Abstract

I might have asked the question, ‘Does Injury Prevention publish intradisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or global research?’. While I did not on this occasion, the analogy is useful in its identification of the critical aspects of the question asked.

A discipline is a clearly delineated area of study supported by an internally consistent epistemology. Intradisciplinary research works within the boundaries that circumscribe the discipline. Multidisciplinary research draws knowledge from different disciplines, and summatively, combines this knowledge to create new insights. Interdisciplinary research compares and contrasts knowledge from different disciplines, explores the links and interactions between them and uses the between-discipline dynamic to generate knowledge. Transdisciplinary research dissolves the disciplinary boundaries and uses the disciplinary DNA from a number of sources to create a new epistemological entity. Global research goes one step beyond this into the realm of methodological pluralism, with the obligatory integration of multiple perspectives in a globally consistent approach to the development of …

Language: en