In Italy, the admission of young scientists to participate in the competition for open professorships is regulated as follows: Every year, all candidates have to submit their writings and lists of writings to a centralized procedure.

The selection is made in a large number of small expert groups, for which the best and better experts in the respective discipline are sought.

Each candidate is assigned to one of these groups, which then compares them to a larger number of similarly specialized competitors.

All positive and negative votes of the expert groups are meticulously recorded and then published.

As a side benefit, this politically desired transparency leads to the creation of potential data sets for scientific research.

A small team has now gone through the files from the 2012 selection process.

The three management researchers were primarily concerned with the question of whether scientists who work in an interdisciplinary manner have a career disadvantage compared to those who are strictly committed to a single science.

A first result of the evaluation states that such disadvantages do indeed exist.

This will probably not surprise anyone with some experience in scientific operations.

What is really interesting about the study is the explanation for the disadvantages it suggests.

Older research on cross-border commuters attributed the problems of those who don't fit into any category to difficulties in forming judgments.

Since most evaluators are only really familiar with a single subject area, they have no certainty about the performance of candidates with a broader orientation and therefore prefer to refrain from making positive assessments for fear of making a bad decision that would have serious consequences.

The appraisers are therefore accused of making a serious effort to select the best, which only occasionally reaches its professional limits.

If they pass good people, it's because they can't see that quality.

It's not due to the incomprehension of the disciplinary establishment

But if it were really due to the value blindness of the judging specialist, then the career disadvantages of the scientific lateral thinkers would have to occur regardless of their respective track record.

The disgrace of the overwhelmed reviewers would have to affect the excellent and the inconspicuous applicants in the same way.

However, this was by no means the case in the selection process examined.

The chances of scientific prolific writers and those with a clear list of publications differed significantly.

The very fact that it is the differences in the expected research performance that is important refutes the thesis that the reviewers cannot recognize them.

The authors rightly point out that all scientists perform their work in the scientific community and enjoy a reputation that one can inquire about if necessary.

Someone who publishes partly in my own discipline and partly in another does not become an incomprehensible being for me.

This leads the authors to the sociologically plausible hypothesis that outsiders are kept out simply because one wants to reserve one's own posts for one's own people.

The prospect of also being able to achieve professional goals in the chosen discipline is one of the strongest motives for bonding with them.

It would be weakened if all professorships were also open to lateral entrants.

The researchers see a strong indication that this is the case in the fact that the interdisciplinary orientation is fatal to high-performing scientists in particular.

In contrast to what one would expect from a pure performance selection, their chances were not better, but worse than those of the weaker border crossers.

The authors take this as evidence that the disciplines in the expert groups defend their cognitive identity, which would be more endangered by admitting strong strangers than by admitting weak strangers.

While these can do little, the scientific star with all the material and human resources he commands can noticeably change his scientific adopted home, and this is exactly what should be prevented.

It speaks in favor of this reading that the described effect weakens when moving from relatively closed disciplines to those that share "their" journals with another science.