In recent years, "integrity" in research activities has expanded beyond the traditional framework, and has come to be considered as an issue in response to security requirements. This special issue contains seven articles on this new "integrity" from various perspectives that may be helpful to universities and other research institutions as well as individual researchers in dealing with this issue. This paper briefly introduces contents of each article.

It is now internationally recognized that there is a need to strengthen measures to address the risks associated with the more opened and globalized nature of research. It is also becoming increasingly recognized internationally that strengthening research integrity, with an emphasis on conflicts of interest, is an effective measure for strengthening research security.

In Japan, government policy requires, among other things, that researchers disclose information on conflicts of interest to the institutions to which they belong.

Currently, universities are implementing such measures, but since there is no accumulation of such measures in Japan, it is appropriate to refer to cases in other countries.

In this article, based on the report we published in May 2022, we describe relevant domestic and international trends, cases of foreign universities, and matters to be noted. We also briefly describe the related report published by OECD in June 2022.

In recent years, research activities have become increasingly international and open. This has brought a number of risks to the surface, including conflicts of interest and commitment and technology leaks caused by undue foreign influence. As a measure against the risks, in April 2021 the Japanese government introduced the Policy Directions for Ensuring Research Integrity in Response to New Risks Associated with Increasing Internationalization and Openness of Research Activities. "Research Integrity" in this context means the soundness and fairness of research, and it is the responsibility of researchers to secure this autonomously. This paper looks at the Policy Directions and introduces an example of efforts made by the research community. Then, by taking overseas initiatives into consideration, the authors outline a vision for the future, with an emphasis on the importance of further collaboration between the research community and government.

Even when transactions to provide information related to certain kinds of technology are completed in the territory of Japan, such transactions may be deemed as exportation and subject to export control. This is "deemed" exportation. From May 1, 2022, the scope of "deemed exportation" is widened for the purpose of strengthening economic security. The expansion of the scope will impact research activities at universities and research institutions. Compared to the USA and EU, the so-called safeguard clause in Japanese law to protect research activities is not well-designed for academia. The scope is narrower than that in the USA and less clear than that in the EU. As long as the current situation without a properly designed safeguard clause should continue, it may cause over-compliance. This paper recommends introducing an adequately designed safeguard clause and strengthening the functions of the legal department.

Foreign government and entities have raised concerns about foreign influence in the U.S. academic sector since around 2018. In Japan as well, in 2021, the Cabinet Office has been promoting guidelines for the appropriate execution of competitive research funds and measures to deal with "new risks." Nonetheless, researchers and administrative officers are confused how to think about research integrity, how it relates to conflicts of interest/conflicts of commitment management, and what "new risks" are. This paper described the background of research integrity and conflict of interest/conflict of commitment management, definition and approach to them, issues and common misunderstandings about autonomy in research activities that ensure research integrity, and discussed risks and risk management in academia.

"Integrity" in research has long been discussed among the academic community, with fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism issues. In the United States, however, China's economic and military expansion was seen as a threat during the Trump administration, and a new "integrity" was required in response to security needs. This included the issues of conflicts of interest and conflicts of commitment. The funding agencies have called on research community to improve research integrity, and asked JASON to review the issue. The academic community responded the situation by taking steps to protect the fundamental value of academic research, which is the open exchange of knowledge and human resources. Examples include the issuing the principles and values of academic research by university associations, consideration by National Academies, and criticism to the Department of Justice's China Initiative. The purpose of this paper is to report on these cases, which may contribute to the consideration in Japan.

In recent years, due to concerns about unfair foreign influence on academic research activities, risk management based on reporting on researchers' relationships with foreign countries has been introduced worldwide. However, as this method does not involve direct evidence of inappropriate foreign influence, such as technology leakage, it cannot be regarded as sufficiently effective.

This article proposes a method for establishing research data governance at universities using the research data management record (DMR) on the research data infrastructure (NII Research Data Cloud, NII RDC) provided to Japanese universities nationwide. The DMRs provided by the researchers, partly manually and partly automatically through the system, will enable the institution to be accountable and compliant for their researchers' research activities. On the other hand, as restricting researchers' research activities through the strengthening of institutional management should be avoided, DMRs should be designed to help shape researchers' future research.

This paper aims to examine the formation of the concept of research integrity and its impact on the openness of universities to society.

Research integrity appeared in an ambiguous form. Previously, it was discussed in relation to geopolitics.

The opening up of university research brings a new landscape in which society uses the research capabilities of universities. University research can be intervened by certain media and politicians who ignore university and scientific norms. The academic community does not fully understand these realities. On the other hand, those who intend to intervene in university research overestimate the university's capabilities. There is a mixture of understanding and misunderstanding between universities and society.

Ultimately, research integrity changes the relationship between universities and society. We need new theories of the university and the relationship between the university and society.

Creating new businesses while adopting to changes in the social environment is an important issue for the growth of corporates. However, because long-term future predictions entail high uncertainty, design of new businesses and relevant decision-making tend to be short-term as well as short-sighted. In this study, we examined the effectiveness of incorporating Future Design into participatory discussions in a company to propose new businesses for the year 2040. Specifically, we introduced imaginary future generations (IFGs) in participatory discussion and confirmed that the approach helped overcome the short-sightedness, improve the ideas that would make contributions to society, create ideas that were defined neither by practicality nor cost and focus on customers and key partners. Further, IFGs' proposals broadened the range of stakeholders involved in comparison with the case of current generation. Proposals of IFGs were evaluated by executives of the company as having more cautious views about the future, long-term benefits, high potentials of business growth, and high impact on industry. These results suggest the effectiveness and impacts of adopting Future Design for supporting to create new and sustainable businesses.

In order to solve the difficult environmental issues, manufacturing enterprises must transform their industrial structure from one that relies on underground resources to sustainable one. It is especially important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in each region to actively innovate and transform themselves.

In this study, we tried to explicate the implicit thinking processes of managers in local manufacturing SMEs by using the action decomposition tree method, an ontology engineering technique. We interviewed managers in three innovative enterprises located in Yonezawa City, Yamagata Prefecture, and described their structures of thinking by action decomposition trees. We extracted upper and lower concepts from the trees and created questions. The questionnaire survey revealed that their ways of thinking and structures of thinking also exist in the other managers in the Yonezawa region. In addition, the relationship between the history and culture unique to the region and the extracted thinking was also investigated.