The workshop series International Dialogue on Education Berlin is a joint initiative of the British Council Germany, the German Academic Exchange Service, the German-American Fulbright Commission, the Australian Group of Eight and the Canadian Bureau for International Education in Berlin.

Through the contributions of international participants the series aims to enrich the debate on science, research and higher education policy in Germany, to place German perspectives in a global context and to learn from positive examples from other countries.

Multi-, Inter- and Trans-disciplinary research promoted by the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST): Lessons and experiments
Ioanna Stavridou and Afonso Ferreira
COST Office, Belgium (2010)
hal.inria.fr/docs/00/52/34/61/PDF/MIT-at-COST.pdf
Multi-, inter-, trans- disciplinary research has gained a lot of interest and investment during the past two decades as a result of the realization that many of today's challenges are resistant to traditional research approaches and require cross-fertilization between different disciplines and integrated knowledge from heterogeneous sources. Despite these needs, evaluation of multi- / inter- / trans- disciplinary research remains one of the least defined aspects. For the purpose of this paper multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinarity will be indicated with the acronym MIT. The objective of this paper is to share with research managers the experience garnered with this evaluation process of MIT proposals for the formation of research networks at COST. The discussion also includes, the advantages and disadvantages of this process and how it compares to other evaluation procedures implemented by several European research funding agencies.

Evaluation of Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Research - A Literature Review
Julie T. Klein, PhD
In: American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2008; 35 (2S):S116-S123
cancercontrol.cancer.gov/brp/scienceteam.pdf
Interdisciplinarity has become a widespread mantra for research, accompanied by a growing body of publications. Evaluation, however, remains one of the least-understood aspects. This review of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research evaluation categorizes lessons from the emergent international literature on the topic reviewed in 2007. It defines parallels between research performance and evaluation, presents seven generic principles for evaluation, and reflects in the conclusion on changing connotations of the underlying concepts of discipline, peer, and measurement.

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