Interdisciplinary research: A literature-based examination of disciplinary intersections using a common tool, geographic information system (GIS)

This study examines the interdisciplinary nature of articles that mention GIS or geographic information system in the title. Bibliographic information for 875 articles gathered from 6 years of an interdisciplinary database was used. Each article was coded based on a disciplinary classification scheme developed for the study. Articles were classified with either one or a number of disciplines assigned to each article. The data set was examined to determine the number of articles that belonged to each discipline. The interdisciplinary connectivity was examined by using single disciplines as focus disciplines, and measuring the percentage of overlap between the focus discipline and other disciplines. The disciplines that publish most in the area of GIS were determined. The interdisciplinary crossover between disciplines that publish in GIS was determined.