The Journal of Science Policy and Research Management
Online ISSN : 2432-7123
Print ISSN : 0914-7020
Volume 29, Issue 2_3
Displaying 1-12 of 12 articles from this issue
  • Naohiro SHICHIJO, Sotaro SHIBAYAMA
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 64-68
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Science in the present society faces increasing number of societalproblems (environment, energy, water etc.) as a result of economicdevelopment and advancement of scientific research. Most of theseproblems cannot be settled only by applying scientific knowledge ofsingle specific discipline, but coordination between different domainsof knowledge-Interdisciplinary Research-is indispensable. Althoughefforts to implement interdisciplinary research and education startedin the early 70s, accumulation of cases are still wanted, theoreticalunderstanding of the value chain in the interdisciplinary research oreducation is waited. In this special issue, seven cases ofinterdisciplinary research and education is presented, that is aimedto be the starting point to call more attention in this topic.
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  • Jordi MOLAS-GALLART, Ismael RAFOLS, Puay TANG
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 69-89
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    There is increasing interest among funding agencies to understand how they can best contribute to enhancing the socio-economic impact of research. Interdisciplinarity is often presented as a research mode that can facilitate impact but there exist a limited number of analytical studies that have attempted to examine whether or how interdisciplinarity can affect the societal relevance of research. We investigate fifteen Social Sciences research investments in the UK to examine how they have achieved impact. We analyse research drivers, cognitive distances, degree of integration, collaborative practices, stakeholder engagement and the type of impact generated. The analysis suggests that interdisciplinarity cannot be associated with a single type of impact mechanism. Also, inteidisciplinarity is neither a sufficient nor a necessary condition for achieving societal relevance and impact. However, we identify a specific modality -- "long-range" interdisciplinarity, which appears more likely to be associated with societal impact because of its focused problem-orientation and its strong interaction with stakeholders.
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  • Ryuma SHINEHA, Kaori IIDA, Hisashi NAKAO, Yoshiyuki KIKUCHI, Koichi MI ...
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 90-105
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Policy discussions, including those in science and technology policy, have long emphasized the importance of the training of expertise to respond to globalization and the development of knowledge-based societies. Simultaneously, it has been increasingly discussed that undergraduate and graduate education should cultivate not just specialized expertise but also other skills and traits, such as the skills to communicate and collaborate with people in other fields, and the awareness of their responsibility and accountability. The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai) has been developing a "science and society" education program that shares some of the above educational goals and has been aiming to cultivate the "broader perspectives" of doctoral students. This paper describes and analyzes the case of the Sokendai program, reviewing the domestic and international trends in "science and society" education at the graduate level. Through this analysis, we discuss the current issues and the future direction of "science and society" education.
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  • Tomohiro ANZAI, Hiromichi KIMURA, Shintaro SENGOKU
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 106-117
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Academic research projects aimed at integrating interdisciplinary and fusion-scientific research and development have been emphasised from a scientific, technological or innovation viewpoint. However, a standard format for the management of an interdisciplinary R&D institute has yet to be established. Considering this issue, the present study demonstrated a case study of interdisciplinary and fusion-scientific activities with a particular focus on the designing and execution phases. First, we conducted a surveillance in the institute to understand the situation and reality of interdisciplinary activities. Based on the validity of this approach, we structured a set of key performance and activity indicators. Furthermore, we discussed an ideal evaluation process and organisation structure, which contributes to bridging practices at the research institute and science policy levels.
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  • Masaru YARIME, Gregory TRENCHER
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 118-131
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    To tackle with societal challenges, it is of critical importance to promote innovation based on a solid understanding of the structure of problems involving in complex ways various factors including science, technology, economy, and politics from inter-disciplinary perspectives. As the existing models of university-industry-government collaboration tend to focus on narrowly-defined technical issues, a new approach to promoting collaboration with a variety of relevant stakeholders will be effective for integrating relevant knowledge and implementing Social experimentation. A case study on the 2000 Watt Society Basel Pilot Region initiated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich illustrates the important aspects of stakeholder collaboration, including the creation of future visions based on science, setting of concrete targets, active participation and engagement of various stakeholders, development of new technologies and systems through societal experimentation, effective feedback to decision makers, incorporation into institutional design, and legitimation of innovation in society.
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  • Masahiro YAMANO
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 132-143
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Three case studies of interdisciplinary research are presented, describing: (1) organizational changes, (2) a new graduate program, and (3) the creation of Office of Research Strategy and Development at Graduate School of Science, the University of Tokyo. The progress of interdisciplinary research is equivalent to the progress of science itself, with the evolution of both affecting each other. This process in turn accelerates change in the organizational structure of universities, leading to further advance of interdisciplinary research. Through these case studies, we illustrate the interaction between evolution of interdisciplinary science and structural changes of institutions, and discuss the role of research strategy and development in interdisciplinary research.
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  • Machiko ITOH
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 144-159
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    For the advancement of science, establishing a new research community based on multiple existing research fields is an essential prerequisite. Such interdisciplinary collaboration is often hampered by unexpected difficulties, whose resolution is the task of policymakers at multiple levels-from the nation-wide to each institute/university-wise scale. This report discusses the assistance for a burgeoning research field before its publication stage through description about interdisciplinary life scientists in Japan. Semi-structured interviews to seven leading scientists suggested that meetings for interdisciplinary discussion and knowledge sharing also function for encouraging prospective and unspecialized students, and for providing "weak ties" which enable scientists to be more creative. Also confirmed are the importance of high specialty for conducting research even in interdisciplinary fields. The scientists spent quite amount of effort and time to acquire structured knowledge of another discipline. To support more scientists to try interdisciplinary research, improvement of personnel systems might be effective.
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  • Mariko YANG-YOSHIHARA, Kiminori GEMBA, Schumpeter TAMADA
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 160-178
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    This article presents an in-depth description of Stanford University's Biodesign, the post-graduate program established in 2001 with a mission to train a new generation of leaders in biomedical technology innovation. We examined the Biodesign's multidisciplinary curriculum in which the competitively selected fellows undergo an intensive 10.5-month training to identify clinical needs, find innovative solutions and plan business strategies for implementation. The strength of the Stanford Biodesign program lies in its unique selection of the applicants where the committee looks for the following "innovation personalities" (Brinton, et. al, 2013) and put them together as a team: (1) the builder (i.e. engineer), (2) the researcher (i.e. scientist), (3) the organizer (i.e. business expert), and (4) the clinician (i.e. medical doctor). The team members collaborate and learn from each other's expertise as they go through the intensive training. The multidisciplinary nature of Biodesign program enables the participants to acquire critical biomedical thinking, entrepreneurial resource, team-building skills and networking opportunities.
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  • Article type: Bibliography
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 179-184
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
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  • Yasuyuki ISHII, Akio NAGAHIRA
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 185-199
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The citation data of invention applied to patents, which is deemed to reflect the patent value, has been frequently used in economic analysis. There has been a lot of research which analyzes the relationship between company value or its productivity and the number of inventions weighted by the number of citations. On the other hand, there has been preceding research which suggests there are attributes other than citation which reflect the value of invention. For example, other attributes such as the number of objections, IPC classifications and inventors are suggested to reflect the value. In this paper, the index was calculated by integrating multiple attributes from preceding research. I compared the calculated index and the citation data by using the Cobb-Douglas production function. According to results, the index better explains the value added of companies and fits better with industry consensus than citation does.
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  • Keisuke SHINAGAWA, Kiminori GEMBA, Atsushi ABE
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 200-213
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Despite the attention process innovation draws in the natural sciences, the process innovation literature does not address the way underlying scientific theory makes possible new process innovations that lead to the development of successful new products. This paper focuses on process innovation that is derived from the latest scientific theory. Using bibliometric data on two new compound semi conductive materials, gallium nitride, and zincselenide used in the development of blue light-emitting diodes, our study indicates that there exists the explosion of scientific knowledge behind the success of GaN development research where the explosion is observed by a rapid increase of published papers and one of the factors for the explosion is attributed to technological process innovation shaped by scientific knowledge. Then the properties of process innovation are discussed.
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  • Yuto TAKAHASHI, Akihiro HIROSE, Ryoma KAWAMURA, Yojun KANEKO, Masahiro ...
    Article type: Article
    2014 Volume 29 Issue 2_3 Pages 214-228
    Published: September 30, 2014
    Released on J-STAGE: October 21, 2017
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Recently geoengineering has attracted attention in Western countries as a possible countermeasure for global warming. Here we report a series of interviews we conducted to assess the distribution of opinions of Japanese experts in related fields. Researchers' opinions were divided, and we found that the differences were caused by how seriously each researcher was concerned about global warming, and whether they thought it is possible to overcome uncertainties and side effects with technological development. Many interviewees attributed the low level of interest in climate engineering to the psyche of Japanese who respect nature. This study would serve as a starting point of wider discussions among experts, citizens, and stakeholders, in order to enable upstream governance of climate engineering. Since geoengineering would affect the global climate regardless of the position of Japan, it is desirable for Japanese experts and citizens to be actively engaged in the global discussions.
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