Both of us, Marina as an economist, Jens as an historian, are not used to stay in the comfort zone of our scientific disciplines; we like to look beyond horizons and take a look at the wide variety of humanities and sciences. We are not doing this just because we are curious, but simply because it‘s our scientific approach. Marina, as an economist, is specialized in juridical aspects of new energies, which means she has to be aware of what scientists in the engineering and juristical faculties think, discuss, and publish. Jens as an historian is specialized in history of digitization and history of archaeology; he has to know all discourses on the internet, the web and new media as well as on different archaeological issues he is working on.
Working in an interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary and multidisciplinary way often provides the basis for new ideas and concepts. Doing scientific research and being adventurous in researching beyond the established frontiers of disciplines and science goes along with several structural problems. One is the institutional aspect. Each scientific discipline, especially in Germany, has its own institutes, societies and publication media. Another problem are the informal distinctions between the disciplines, their specific semantic terms, the specific understanding of general theories and their sublimely shared paradigms; furthermore their networks of communication and patronage as well as all the little things that have to do with tradition and especially with scientific power.
As a scientist on the edge of disciplines, it often feels as being neither part of the one nor of the other discipline. As an historian of archaeology, most of Jens historiography fellows don‘t understand his interest in the archaeological field. The archaeologists on the other hand don‘t accept an historian as one of their own so easily. Not having an inside position of an academic discipline means not being connected to all the information sources that may be relevant and in many ways it also means a lack of access to the disciplinary discourse. This is why we are so hopefully expecting more openness because scholars like us will benefit. One might assume this as a specific situation of only a few scientists which aren‘t clearly affiliated with the discipline. Certainly, most fellow scientists can identify themselves with one discipline, but we think everyone will benefit from well-ordered openness.
The traditional mode of operation in academia is about the trade of information and knowledge, not about sharing these goods for free with everyone who’s interested. This behavior is often criticized, because most of the academic results are produced by public funding. So privatizing these results for the personal advantage of single scientists is kind of an unfair act. But this is not the point we want to emphasize. Our perspective is about the exchange of information and knowledge in order to improve research. Not every scholar should work on the edge of his scientific discipline and the intersection with other ones. But we think every scientist should at least be concerned about what neighboring disciplines discuss on the relevant issues, on methods and theories. Why this proposal? Because we think this would improve the scientific practice and theory. All scientific disciplines are strongly influenced by general concepts, paradigms schools of thoughts. Being aware of this influence and critically reflect this situation is important but greatly underestimated. By seeing past your own discipline, the ivory tower effect, scientists often suffer from, is questioned by new ideas, different paradigms, methods and tools. Whilst being confronted with all these aspects, it is also important not to forget about the traditional way of doing research and to reflect critically on them. All these factors together will be a good starting point for a more self-reflected scholarship. In our opinion this will level up scientific epistemology as a whole. So let’s be open to think multidisciplinary!