Scientific Research: Opening the Door to the Future
Chapter 4 Domestic and Overseas Trends in Scientific Research
Section 2: Trends in Individual Research Fields
Accurately monitoring trends in individual research fields is necessary to planning and proposing science policy. The Survey of Trends in Scientific Research in Japan, a research project funded by grants-in-aid for scientific re-search in fiscal 1996 and 1997, administered a questionnaire to researchers in various fields, and the results were studied and analyzed by leading research workers. This section provides a brief overview of the latest survey results, with particular emphasis on future directions, but it deals only with characteristic trends and does not cover all important fields of research.