Conservation is likely to be most successful if it draws on knowledge from across the natural and social sciences. The ecosystem services concept has been called a boundary object in that it facilitates development of such interdisciplinary knowledge because it offers a common platform for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners. However, a question that remains is to what extent the interdisciplinary knowledge needed is provided by disciplinary diversity within the field. We asked where is knowledge on ecosystem services produced, how interdisciplinary is this knowledge, and which disciplines facilitate the greatest disciplinary integration? We defined interdisciplinarity as the extent to which published research draws on knowledge that crosses disciplinary borders and used citations as a quantitative indicator of communication among disciplines, based on journal classification. We used disciplinary diversity, richness, and heterocitation as measures of interdisciplinarity and betweenness centrality as a measure of disciplinary integration. Our data set contained 22,153 publications on ecosystem services, published from 1983 to 2018. We found that ecosystem services research matured; average yearly output growth was 33.8%, more than the 8–9% growth in scientific output across all fields. Over time, the network clustering coefficient, measuring connectedness of individual disciplines, rose from 0.388 to 0.727, suggesting increased density in the network of citations. Researchers in the field published more articles (3566 in 2018 alone) across more disciplines (77 unique disciplines in 2018). However, this growth was not mirrored by an increase in the diversity (stable at 0.7–0.9) or richness (averaging 0.35 unique disciplines per citation) of citation patterns. Heterocitation scores, or out-of-group citations, for arts, humanities, social sciences, and law ranged from 56% to 64%, which was lower than we expected, although this may serve to protect the integrity of social science disciplines and attract broader engagement from within. Ultimately, a small number of productive disciplines are central to supporting disciplinary integration. However, opportunities exist for conservation practice to draw on a broader field of research, to realize the potential that the diverse body of knowledge of interdisciplinary work offers.

中文翻译：

---

跨越边界探讨生态系统服务知识生产跨学科的潜力

如果利用来自自然科学和社会科学的知识，保护工作可能最成功。生态系统服务概念被称为边界对象，因为它促进了此类跨学科知识的发展，因为它为研究人员、政策制定者和从业者提供了一个通用平台。然而，仍然存在的问题是，该领域内的学科多样性在多大程度上提供了所需的跨学科知识。我们询问了关于生态系统服务的知识是从哪里产生的，这些知识是如何跨学科的，哪些学科促进了最大的学科整合？我们定义了跨学科已发表的研究在多大程度上利用了跨越学科边界的知识，并将引用作为学科间交流的量化指标，基于期刊分类。我们使用学科多样性、丰富性和异质引用作为跨学科性的衡量标准，将中介中心性作为学科整合的衡量标准。我们的数据集包含 22,153 篇关于生态系统服务的出版物，发表时间为 1983 年至 2018 年。我们发现生态系统服务研究已经成熟；年均产出增长率为 33.8%，高于所有领域科学产出 8-9% 的增长率。随着时间的推移，衡量各个学科连通性的网络聚类系数从 0.388 上升到 0.727，表明引用网络的密度增加。该领域的研究人员在更多学科（2018 年有 77 个独特学科）发表了更多文章（仅 2018 年就有 3566 篇）。然而，这种增长并没有通过引用模式的多样性（稳定在 0.7-0.9）或丰富性（平均每次引用 0.35 个独特学科）的增加来反映。艺术、人文、社会科学和法律的异源引用分数或组外引用的范围从 56% 到 64%，低于我们的预期，尽管这可能有助于保护社会科学学科的完整性并吸引内部更广泛的参与。归根结底，少数生产性学科是支持学科整合的核心。然而，保护实践有机会利用更广泛的研究领域，