NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
TOKYO REGIONAL OFFICE

July 26, 2002

The National Science Foundation's Tokyo Regional Office periodically reports on developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission.  It also provides occasional reports on developments in other East Asian countries.

Tokyo Office Report Memoranda are intended to provide information for the use of NSF program officers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy.

The following report was prepared by Kazuko Shinohara of the National Science Foundation’s Tokyo Regional Office. Ms. Shinohara may be reached at kshinoha@nsf.gov.

In an effort to reform the Japanese system for competitive research funding, the CSTP (Council for Science and Technology Policy) has selected a subgroup of its members to recommend steps for promoting the reform (see attachment 1). The members convened four times from April through June 2002, and in their fifth meeting in June they compiled an interim report. In addition, the Experts' Committee for Reforming the S&T System reviewed the meeting results twice.

In the first meeting the CSTP members compared the funding systems between the U.S. and Japan. The second meeting was devoted to a comparison of proposal review systems between the U.S. and Japan. The third meeting discussed the points of reform for competitive research funding. In their fourth meeting they drafted an interim report and in the fifth meeting the interim report was completed. In each meeting their discussion was based on a considerable volume of information collected based on their thorough investigation.

Some of their efforts are already known to NSF, since both NSF Tokyo Office as well and NSF headquarters have recently been visited by the staff of Japanese think tank organizations, which were under contract with Japanese governmental organizations, for interview on various aspects of NSF's funding mechanisms. For example based on discussions in Tokyo and the United States, the Mitsubishi Research Institute has independently compiled a report in Japanese titled “Investigations on the method of fostering evaluators of R&D.”

The CSTP's interim report suggests the following five points of reform. [NB: These are not strict translations of the original Japanese text, but only key points extracted from that text.]

The current system should be so revised that research assistants’salaries will be borne from direct costs, which means that they can be disbursed from research funds. Also, research institutions will have to be prepared with regulations needed to hire research assistants which be flexible to meet each research assistant's capabilities.

As for indirect costs, the Second S&T Basic Plan stipulates the rate of indirect costs as 30% for the time being, which was introduced in JFY 2001. However, indirect costs should differ, depending on research institutions.

An environment should be established where young researchers can independently conduct research. Concretely, the system for funding young researchers should be revised. To have assistant and associate professors to be independent from professors, the definitions of their positions in the School Law should be reviewed. It should be made possible that young researchers hire research assistants using competitive research funds, independently from their professors.

Research leaders should recognize that graduate students are part of the team and provide salaries to them. Financial support to graduate students in Japan is lower than in other countries, and this situation needs to be improved. By the plan of “10,000 Postdocs” and subsequent postdoc programs sponsored by quasi-governmental organizations, the number of postdocs has expanded, but more efforts should be made to have the postdocs hired from the competitive funds, while it is not the case now.

Each research funding organization needs to review its evaluation system based on the “Guidelines for Evaluating National R&D” established in November 2001.

To be ready to implement the system of “Program Officers,” funding organizations are required to submit the ideal number of program officers at their organizations, their qualifications, and their remunerations to the CSTP (Council for Science and Technology Policy) together with the budget request for JFY2003. The final decision on the system will be made by JFY2005.

Proposals should have more detailed descriptions of research plans and expected research results. The program officers should select evaluators of the proposals based on the understanding that the evaluators will make contributions to the future of Japanese science and technology. The evaluators should be selected regardless of age and title. Excellent young researchers at universities and companies should be included among the evaluators, among whom especially excellent researchers should be able to have responsible positions in the evaluation committee. Evaluators should be paid to assure their commitment and excellence.

Each funding agency should select evaluators based on their objectives and content of research, not by the recommendations of other organizations, including academic societies. The evaluation results should be shown to the applicants. The evaluation method should have flexibility so that the program officers themselves can make decisions, depending on the research themes, rather than relying exclusively on written peer reviews. Continuation of funding to the same project after termination of the first research period should be made possible. Each ministry/agency should create and manage a database which includes researchers' names, award amounts, research results, evaluators and evaluation results. Electronic application and evaluation should be introduced.

Funding agencies should decide the allocation amounts comprehensively and strategically from the viewpoints of promoting science and technology.

In case the research is interdisciplinary or is a industry-university-government collaboration-type of research, the principal investigator's responsibility and authority should be made clear.

The R&D period should be from 3-5 years.

The research funds can be used for equipment, consumables, labor, and travel. These items should have flexibility in the percentage of the total grant award. Carry-over of the research funds to the next fiscal year should be made possible. Allocation of funds should be made as flexible as possible, in accordance with the reality and progress of R&D, since the equipment needs to be purchased in the first year.

Along the lines set in the Intellectual Property Strategies, the intellectual property rights obtained from the government competitive research funds should belong to the research institutes. The Japanese version of the Bayh-Dole Act should be applied to all the contract research. The research results obtained at research institutes should belong to the research institutes and its commercialization should be discussed between the research institutes and companies with appropriate compensation to inventors. The research institutes should establish their internal regulations so that the inventors (researchers) will have sufficient allocation amount of profit gained from commercialization.

Submission of plural number of applications per year should be made possible.

Application forms should also be prepared in English, which should be announced at the time of solicitation so that foreign researchers should be able to apply from their countries.

Applications from senior researchers or those close to retirement should be evaluated equally with other applications.

The CSTP will comment on and coordinate the budget requests for competitive research funds to be submitted by each ministry/agency. Also, CSTP will follow up on the reform for competitive research funds and provide their comments to each ministry/agency.

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Sources:

Minutes of the 1st meeting for reforming competitive research fund system
Minutes of the 2nd meeting for reforming competitive research fund system
Minutes of the 3rd meeting for reforming competitive research fund system
Interim report for reforming competitive research fund system
Investigations on the method of fostering evaluators of R&D
Newspaper articles

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