  This study contributes to the recent discussions on indicating
interdisciplinarity, i.e., going beyond catch-all metrics of
interdisciplinarity. We propose a contextual framework to improve the
granularity and usability of the existing methodology for interdisciplinary
knowledge flow (IKF) in which scientific disciplines import and export
knowledge from/to other disciplines. To characterize the knowledge exchange
between disciplines, we recognize three aspects of IKF under this framework,
namely, broadness, intensity, and homogeneity. We show how to utilize them to
uncover different forms of interdisciplinarity, especially between disciplines
with the largest volume of IKF. We apply this framework in two use cases, one
at the level of disciplines and one at the level of journals, to show how it
can offer a more holistic and detailed viewpoint on the interdisciplinarity of
scientific entities than aggregated and context-unaware indicators. We further
compare our proposed framework, an indicating process, with established
indicators and discuss how such information tools on interdisciplinarity can
assist science policy practices such as performance-based research funding
systems and panel-based peer review processes.
