Measuring and assessing relative disciplinary openness in university research units

Since multidisciplinary composition of scientific staff can be regarded as a precondition of interdisciplinary work, one indicator for interdisciplinarity in research is the multidisciplinary background of 1,349 University Louis Pasteur staff in 74 laboratories, covering five disciplinary fields. Econometric estimation is based on internal characteristics of laboratories such as status, size, institutional origins of researchers and scientific departments. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.