Multidisciplinary and cosmopolitan: how openness influences the academic impact of a scholar's research

The academic impact of a scholar's research remains of great importance to institutions, particularly business schools. Hyungseok (David) Yoon and Mustapha Belkhouja report on research examining how scholars' openness to other disciplines and broader collaborations influences their academic impact, as determined by citation analysis. Findings suggest that the career stage of academics is an important factor, with early-career researchers encouraged to be open to multidisciplinary work (up to a tipping point) and to collaborating with academics from different institutions, while academics who are more established in their careers should also continue to diversify their research domains but ideally focus more on internal collaborations.