Artifacts & Analysis
Four published artifacts show how evidence about interdisciplinary collaboration is adapted for expert and public audiences.
01 | Expert Writing to Experts
Artifact: Wallrich, Opara, Wesołowska, Barnoth, and Yousefi (2024), The relationship between team diversity and team performance.
Author, audience, genre & context: Five researchers present a registered-report meta-analysis in the Journal of Business and Psychology for organizational researchers and specialists who understand effect sizes and statistical synthesis.
Purpose & ethos: The authors test broad performance claims against aggregated evidence. Registration, reproducible data/code, and attention to uncertainty build methodological trust. Their small average positive associations challenge the assumption that diverse teams automatically perform substantially better.
Three reader-centered strategies: (1) The abstract previews question, method, results, and implications so specialists can assess relevance quickly. (2) Separate definitions of diversity and performance prevent readers from treating different constructs as interchangeable. (3) Quantified effects and moderator analyses support precise comparisons rather than a universal yes/no conclusion.
Critical reading: Statistical significance is not practical importance. Context-sensitive findings fit our team's question, but do not establish that any particular communication practice causes success.
02 | Expert Writing to Lay Readers
Artifact: Katherine W. Phillips (2014), How Diversity Makes Us Smarter, Scientific American.
Author & Audience: An organizational scholar explains research for educated non-specialists, students, and workplace readers. Statistical training is not assumed.
Genre & Context: A popular science article.
Purpose & Ethos: Phillips argues that different perspectives encourage deeper thinking. Her research experience, named studies, and acknowledgment of difficulties support credibility.
Three Reader-Centered Strategies: (1) A car-building example makes disciplinary expertise concrete. (2) Question-based transitions anticipate readers' doubts about diversity. (3) Narratives of group experiments explain mechanisms without making readers decode statistical tables.
Critical Reading: The confident headline makes the claim memorable but compresses variation across contexts. Social diversity and functional diversity overlap conceptually without being identical. We use the article to analyze public explanation, not to prove that all interdisciplinary teams succeed.
03 | Data Presentation for Experts
Artifact: Figure 3, Influences on citations received, in Alison Specht and Kevin Crowston (2022), PLOS ONE.
Author & Audience: A two-panel regression visualization in an empirical study of scientific working groups addresses team-science researchers and readers trained in statistical modeling.
Genre & Context: Published in PLOS ONE, the visual utilizes a two-panel regression format within an empirical research context.
Purpose & Ethos: The figure examines nonlinear relationships between interdisciplinarity and citation impact. A caption explaining standardized axes, partial residuals, and a 95% confidence envelope makes the visual auditable.
Three Reader-Centered Strategies: (1) Parallel panels distinguish two measures of interdisciplinarity. (2) Data points alongside fitted curves separate observed variation from modeled patterns. (3) Confidence shading and caption definitions communicate uncertainty and how to interpret the axes.
Critical Reading: On the horizontal axes, zero denotes the grand mean, not an absence of interdisciplinarity. The dots are partial residuals, not raw citation totals. Citations indicate scholarly attention, not every form of team success; an association cannot establish causation.
04 | Data Presentation for Lay Readers
Artifact: The References trend chart under Interdisciplinary Research Is on the Rise in Richard Van Noorden (2015), Interdisciplinary research by the numbers, Nature News.
Author, audience, genre & context: A science journalist presents bibliometric data in an explanatory news feature for broad science-interested readers, including people without bibliometrics expertise. Its placement in Nature does not make this news graphic a specialist research figure.
Purpose & ethos: The chart introduces changes in cross-disciplinary citation patterns. Attribution to Vincent Larivière and Yves Gingras lets readers trace the underlying analysis.
Three reader-centered strategies: (1) A takeaway heading establishes the main trend before the details. (2) Lines over time make change visible without regression notation. (3) Nearby prose defines outside-discipline references and supplies a familiar genetics/zoology comparison.
Critical reading: Citation patterns are a proxy for knowledge exchange, not direct observations of teamwork quality. A historical trend cannot prove that a particular team communicates effectively. The graphic's accessible framing helps public readers enter a specialized topic.
What Changes Across Audiences?
Expert artifacts foreground definitions, methods, and uncertainty so readers can examine evidence. Public artifacts foreground concrete examples and visible takeaways so readers can understand why the topic matters. Both need traceable sources.
Our proposed application for a medical portal team is shared definitions for clinicians and developers, clear responsibilities, and a way to discuss disagreements. These are suggestions for future investigation, not results of an experiment conducted by our team.