Abstract
Higher education research (HER) is often defined as an inherently interdisciplinary field of study. However, there has been limited examination of this topic, especially regarding the interdisciplinarity of Chinese HER. Using the two most widely accepted databases, this study launched two holistic investigations into the interdisciplinarity of Chinese HER using citation analysis. Study 1 examined the citation patterns between Chinese HER and education, economics, management, political science, psychology, and sociology. Study 2 analyzed and compared the interdisciplinary characteristics of Chinese and international HER. The analysis reveals that the interdisciplinarity of Chinese HER ranks in the upper center of the seven sociology disciplines. HER and other disciplines interact in an asymmetrical way, with HER acting as a “knowledge importer”. Citation analysis also reveals that HER is indeed an interdisciplinary field, although the degree of interdisciplinarity in Chinese HER is lower than that in international HER. The largest share of the cited references from both Chinese and international HER relates to educational research, yet there are differences in the disciplinary distribution of out-education citations. For Chinese HER, the most neighbouring disciplines are economics, management, and political science, whereas for those closest to international HER, psychology is the dominant discipline. Additionally, the interdisciplinarity of HER both in China and international was path-dependent. Finally, possible reasons for the patterns observed are advanced and discussed.