The Pursuit of Transdisciplinary Research: Eight Recommendations for Integrating Disciplines

Significant strides are being made to produce more transdisciplinary research in the systems, man, and cybernetics (SMC) community, which is inherently interdisciplinary. To produce effective transdisciplinary SMC work, perspectives from multiple disciplines must be integrated. Yet, continued work is still needed to help promote the transdisciplinary nature of SMC and encourage more transdisciplinary work in this area. This article offers eight recommendations for developing foundational transdisciplinary SMC-based research. These recommendations relate to the following areas: 1) academic training, 2) a shared and common language, 3) the need for transdisciplinarity, 4) problem space requirements, 5) shared spaces and mechanisms, 6) team science and cognition, 7) credit, and 8) metrics to measure transdisciplinary performance.