  Interdisciplinary research is fundamental when it comes to tackling complex
problems in our highly interlinked world, and is on the rise globally. Yet, it
is unclear why--in an increasingly competitive academic environment--one should
pursue an interdisciplinary career given its recent negative press. Several
studies have indeed shown that interdisciplinary research often achieves lower
impact compared to more specialized work, and is less likely to attract
funding. We seek to reconcile such evidence by analyzing a dataset of 44,419
research grants awarded between 2006 and 2018 from the seven national research
councils in the UK. We compared the research performance of researchers with an
interdisciplinary funding track record with those who have a specialized
profile. We found that the former dominates the network of academic
collaborations, both in terms of centrality and knowledge brokerage; but such a
competitive advantage does not immediately translate into impact. Indeed, by
means of a matched pair experimental design, we found that researchers who
transcend between disciplines on average achieve lower impacts in their
publications than the subject specialists in the short run, but eventually
outperform them in funding performance, both in terms of volume and value. Our
results suggest that launching an interdisciplinary career may require more
time and persistence to overcome extra challenges, but can pave the way for a
more successful endeavour.
