Toolkitting: an unrecognized form of expertise for overcoming fragmentation in inter- and transdisciplinarity

While the globe suffers from complex problems, those tackling such problems using inter- and transdisciplinary (ITD) research must often spend precious time and effort re-learning, re-creating, and re-legitimizing promising practices across projects. Unlike disciplinary research, ITD research has no established canons of tested and well-referenced methods and other tools. Instead, knowledge about ITD tools is often tacit and, when published, is scattered across a wide range of literature, leading to fragmentation that makes it hard to find, use, and justify tools appropriately. To overcome this fragmentation, many organizations and individuals have created ITD toolkits, but these toolkits themselves are now fragmented across communities. The authors, members of the ITD Alliance’s Toolkits and Methods Working Group, have mapped and visualized the landscape of ITD toolkits since 2020 and bring experience as creators, users, and scholars of toolkits. The article does not pose a specific research question; rather, it spotlights the unrecognized expertise involved in the creation, maintenance, and study of toolkits—collectively termed toolkitting. Toolkitting is positioned as a unique ITD expertise that, with strategic development, can build the ITD field and unleash the potential of ITD toolkits. The article reviews the toolkits landscape, details four example toolkits, examines toolkitting expertise (creation, maintenance, scholarship), and concludes with guiding questions and proposed initiatives—an inventory and a federated knowledge bank—to address fragmentation.

The article is a reflective, experience-based analysis drawing on the authors’ collective and individual involvement in creating, curating, using, and studying ITD toolkits, situated within the ITD Alliance’s Toolkits and Methods Working Group (active since 2020). The authors identified 64 English-language toolkits (plus others in German, Spanish, Dutch, and Japanese) via a mapping effort and provide brief overviews alongside four in-depth exemplars that some authors have developed: td-net Toolbox, i2Insights blog and repository, Integrated Research Toolkit, and SHAPE-ID Toolkit. Rather than testing hypotheses, the paper synthesizes lessons learned to articulate processes and expertise for three toolkitting practices: toolkit creation (definition, design, development, dissemination and governance), toolkit maintenance (updating links and resources, adding new content, assessing use and value, and decommissioning), and toolkit scholarship (studying toolkitting from within and outside). It also formulates guiding questions for creators/curators, scholars, and funders and proposes field-level infrastructure: a comprehensive, ongoing inventory and a federated knowledge bank. Evidence includes descriptive statistics (e.g., count of toolkits, maintenance status), detailed descriptions of toolkit operations (e.g., indexing, link-check routines), and references to relevant scholarship on interdisciplinarity, STS, design science, and open infrastructures.

• Fragmentation: Both ITD tools and toolkits are fragmented across communities and platforms, impeding discovery, use, justification, and cumulative learning.
• Scope of landscape: The Working Group identified 64 English-language ITD-relevant toolkits; many more exist across other languages and adjacent fields (e.g., systems thinking, design). Of 64 examined, 16 are not maintained.
• Diverse exemplars: Four toolkits illustrate different purposes and architectures: • td-net Toolbox: curated methods for knowledge co-production; 20 detailed methods plus additional characterized tools; guides by process phases and issues; user experiences section. • i2Insights: community-contributed repository for tackling complex problems, indexing by topics, resource types, and tags; >500 tools; typically adds a new tool weekly; WordPress-based; ontology registered in BioPortal. • Integrated Research Toolkit: assists newcomers to integrative research; 56 resources; organized alphabetically, by phase/topic, and via guides/case studies; biannual link checks (3–4 hours each). • SHAPE-ID Toolkit: integrates AHSS with STEM and societal partners; nine topical areas; five resource types; editorial board maintains links ad hoc due to lack of dedicated funds.
• Toolkitting as metawork: Toolkitting (creation, use, maintenance, funding, study) is distinct expertise that organizes and legitimizes ITD practices, enhances accessibility and rigor, and can build field standards without enforcing conformity.
• Creation process and expertise: Effective creation involves clear rationale and audience, user-centered design, platform selection, content curation with quality discernment, metadata and indexing for FAIRness, dissemination and onboarding, and governance to ensure capability and capacity.
• Maintenance process and expertise: Active maintenance keeps toolkits current by fixing links, updating or replacing outdated tools, adding new resources, assessing usage and utility, and responsibly decommissioning when necessary. Additional skills include technical maintenance, identifying emerging/outdated tools, and formative/summative assessment.
• Scholarship on toolkitting: Toolkitting is an emerging research subject; can be studied from outside (STS, philosophy) or within (design science, constructionist approaches). It can inform evaluation practices, funding design, and understanding of how research operates across disciplinary boundaries.
• Risks and trade-offs: Risks include premature canonization, context-mismatch, epistemic extraction, and continued fragmentation via poor dissemination or inaccessible language. Toolkitting requires practical wisdom, reflexivity, and attention to power, privilege, and decolonizing practices.
• Field-level solutions: Proposed development of a comprehensive, ongoing inventory of toolkits to support cumulative learning, reduce duplication, and document the evolving ITD landscape; and a federated knowledge bank leveraging interoperable infrastructures (e.g., Open Knowledge Network) to connect diverse toolkits while respecting heterogeneity.
• Guiding questions: Concrete questions are provided for creators/curators (purpose, quality, practicalities), scholars (boundaries, inclusion, power, impacts, comparisons), and funders (support visibility, FAIR principles, coverage gaps, sustainment of keystone toolkits, reviewer resources).

The paper reframes the challenge of ITD toolkit fragmentation as a sociotechnical problem that can be addressed by developing toolkitting expertise and infrastructure. By articulating processes and competencies for toolkit creation, maintenance, and scholarship, the authors provide a pathway to improve findability, usability, legitimacy, and rigor of ITD practices. The four exemplars demonstrate diverse design choices that serve different user needs, showing that heterogeneity is valuable but requires coordination to avoid duplication and decay. Maintenance practices and governance are critical to sustaining quality; empirical details (e.g., link-check schedules, editorial structures) illustrate feasible routines. The proposed inventory addresses immediate discovery and coordination gaps, while a federated knowledge bank offers a scalable, interoperable approach to connect toolkits without erasing diversity. The discussion also surfaces ethical and epistemic risks (premature canonization, epistemic extraction, language dominance) and emphasizes reflexivity, decolonizing awareness, and inclusive governance. Collectively, these strategies directly target fragmentation, enabling cumulative learning and more efficient, higher-quality ITD research.

The authors call for elevating toolkitting as a distinct, strategic expertise to strengthen ITD research. They advance three main contributions: (1) naming and detailing toolkitting expertise across creation, maintenance, and scholarship; (2) proposing a comprehensive, ongoing inventory of ITD toolkits to overcome fragmentation and support cumulative learning; and (3) using the inventory as the foundation for a federated knowledge bank that connects diverse toolkits through interoperable infrastructures while respecting heterogeneity. Although based on a small set of cases and reflective practice, the work offers practical guidance via targeted questions for creators/curators, scholars, and funders, and outlines concrete governance and maintenance considerations. Future efforts should broaden participation across stakeholders and languages, study toolkit use and funding in depth, and co-develop the proposed infrastructure to achieve a step-change in enhancing ITD research.

The article is not an empirical study with a formal research design but a reflective synthesis grounded in the authors’ experiences as toolkit creators, curators, users, and scholars. The approach is not exhaustive and builds from a convenience sample of four detailed cases. The authors primarily write as researchers, with corresponding positional limitations. Toolkit use and funding are acknowledged as important but are not treated in depth. Findings about the landscape (e.g., number of toolkits, maintenance status) are preliminary and not comprehensive. Language and community coverage are skewed toward English-language resources and the authors’ networks.