On 31 January 2024, OUM launched its Strategic Research Alliances (SRAs), a new initiative that provides structures and incentives for its academics to collaborate on themed research across faculties and disciplines. Details of the initiative were made public when the SRAs were officially launched by OUM’s Pro Chancellor, Tan Sri Azman Hashim. As has been reported on various platforms, four themed SRAs were set up to focus respectively on technology integration and innovation, inclusive and sustainable education, quality education, and, lastly, health, well-being, spirituality, and environmental sustainability. Each research alliance comprises five research focus groups, making a total of 20 focus groups. It has also been reported, for instance, that the SRAs aim to promote interdisciplinary collaboration, foster an innovative culture within the university, and enhance the university’s competitiveness. Instead of repeating what has already been announced, we want to take this opportunity to take a hard-nosed look at the conception of interdisciplinarity in the SRAs.

OUM academics are relatively few in number and spread across wide-ranging disciplines, which makes interdisciplinary research collaboration between them both necessary and challenging, yet potentially rewarding.

It bears repeating that all scholarly research aims to contribute something new and valuable to the existing body of knowledge. The initiatives of OUM’s SRAs are no different. What is different, however, is that OUM operates with a smaller pool of full-time academics compared to most conventional universities, as is necessitated by the operational model of the open university that it follows. The open university operational model is such that, to scale higher education and make fees affordable to the masses, technology is leveraged to redistribute teaching that is otherwise conventionally delivered by in-person lecturers. Teaching is redistributed across assemblages of self-study materials that stand in for the standard lectures, on the one hand, and on the other, sessional e-tutors whose main responsibility is to help learners grasp and apply key concepts. The redistribution of teaching enables the university to operate with fewer full-time academics, charge lower fees, and widen mass access to higher education. With a smaller pool of academics, the university has to strategically channel its research focus to a small cluster of themes. This is to ensure that the university’s collective research output is concentrated and makes the biggest impact relative to its size. The SRAs are, in short, borne out of pragmatic necessity.

the benefits of interdisciplinary research collaboration are realized throughout the process, not solely in the outcome represented by the publication of research findings

It is important to note that, while the SRAs prioritize specific thematic clusters, research on alternative topics within each academic’s disciplinary purview is not precluded from institutional support. After all, OUM academics are foremost experts in their respective disciplines. Many serve as programme directors, course leaders, and supervisors to research students – roles that require them to stay current with fast-evolving developments in knowledge production. The best way to help them achieve this is by giving them the necessary space and support to conduct research on emerging questions and issues in their professed fields and to publish their findings in leading journals. By the same token, the best way to undermine a university is to withhold support for its academics’ intellectual growth.

OUM academics are relatively few in number and spread across wide-ranging disciplines, which makes interdisciplinary research collaboration between them both necessary and challenging, yet potentially rewarding. Interdisciplinary research is about integrating ideas, theories, methods, and perspectives from multiple academic disciplines to address complex problems, issues, or questions. In theory, at least, interdisciplinary research is an ideal objective, for it promises a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena that surpasses the limitations of any single discipline. In real-life practice, however, interdisciplinary research is often only superficially realized. This may not be due to a lack of effort but rather because it presents sobering challenges that are frequently underestimated or downplayed. Each discipline has its own specialized ideas, theories, and methodologies, and integrating these into a coherent framework is almost always hindered by conflicting paradigms and epistemological differences. As groundbreaking as the concept of interdisciplinary research may be, it inevitably also runs up against entrenched traditional academic evaluation metrics and reward systems. These metrics and systems act as gatekeepers, potentially impeding the publication of interdisciplinary research findings in established journals.

To acknowledge the challenges of interdisciplinarity within academia, where silos of expertise still largely predominate, does not imply abandoning interdisciplinary research, which we have already established as necessary and potentially rewarding for OUM. This is because the benefits of interdisciplinary research collaboration are realized throughout the process, not solely in the outcome represented by the publication of research findings, if it comes to that. By process, we include the ongoing exchange of ideas, the synthesis of diverse perspectives, and the cultivation of interdisciplinary skills and networks among researchers.

These processual benefits are invaluable to any researcher within and beyond OUM, particularly those who may have previously operated within narrow disciplinary confines and perceived research validity solely through their own training. Those fitting this description may, for instance, view research as linear in trajectory, believing it must follow a predefined methodological path: starting with a hypothesis, constructing research questions, conducting a literature review, followed by data collection, experimentation, analysis, and finally, drawing conclusions. They may be unaware that there are other equally valid ways of doing research – that, for instance, research could be recursive, as it often is, allowing for a non-linear process of discovery with continuous feedback and refinement of the critical inquiry, thus eschewing the futility of figuring out every conceivable aspect of the research at the outset. Academic researchers who stand to gain the most processual benefits from interdisciplinary research collaboration also include those who are unaccustomed to divergence from the idea that data must be measurable and observable, research findings must be objective and reproducible, and subjectivity must be minimized and disavowed.

The work ahead for the SRAs, though, is not the academics’ alone. The university, too, must also live up to its role in supporting the SRAs.

By promoting interdisciplinary research collaboration in the SRAs, we are hopeful that our academics from a broad range of disciplinary and intellectual backgrounds will come to learn from each other, broadening their conception of research through a process of negotiation and productive tension. The work ahead for the SRAs, though, is not the academics’ alone. The university, too, must also live up to its role in supporting the SRAs. The responsibility falls squarely on the Office of the Vice President (Academic and Research) and the Centre for Research and Innovation working in tandem to realize the research agenda specified in OUM’s Strategic Roadmap (2022-2026), as mandated by the President/Vice Chancellor, Prof Dr Ahmad Izanee Awang. We ought to provide a collegial environment for the academics to nurture their ideas. We must ensure that no one research methodology is privileged or imposed as the measure of the validity of other methodologies, especially when reviewing internal grant applications. We need to cultivate the wisdom and generosity to recognize the merits of each research proposal beyond merely assessing whether it programmatically pre-plans everything from the outset, as empiricists might expect. We should focus on whether the germ of the proposed ideas shows promise in evolving and developing, much like a larva transforming into a dragonfly. And we need to give our academics the benefit of the doubt by supporting them in the areas they identify as requiring support, rather than assuming what they need. Only then can we expect to reap the fruits of our SRAs.

Prof Datuk Dr Mohd Tajudin Md Ninggal (tajudin@oum.edu.my) is OUM’s Vice President/Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic & Research), while Dr Md Rosli Ismail (mdrosli@ oum.edu.my) is the Director of OUM’s Centre for Research and Innovation.