Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > Annual Report on the Promotion of Science and Technology 1999 > Part1 Chapter3 Section2 1

Researchers normally produce high-level results when they are in their prime, i.e., between their late 20s, after completing a doctoral program, and through their late 30s. All of Japan's five Nobel prizewinners in natural science achieved their prizewinning results in that period, i.e., either in their late 20s or in their late 30s ( Fig. 19 ). In other words, whether a researcher achieves high-level results depends on the type of research environment in which he or she works during this period.

Fig. 19: japanese nobel prizewinners (in the field of natural science) and ages at which they announced their prizewinning research

In order for their abilities to develop, young researchers require research systems and environments that allow them to act on their own discretion and to select workplaces where they can find good mentors and display their own capabilities. When asked why they wished to move to another research institute, 70% of researchers cited the desire for interchange with new researchers, suggesting that researchers themselves also desire stimulating environments.

In addition to the types of environments that permit research by own initiative, enhancing researcher creativity through intellectual stimulation also requires greater human resource mobility, including compensation and social security systems. Measures such as annual, performance-based salaries would encourage active mobility among researchers. It is also important to adequately ameliorate the considerable disadvantages in social security and pensions currently faced by postdoc researchers and other researchers with job mobility.

Securing the required numbers of research assistants requires the use of placement agencies with research support services. The advanced, complicated nature of a research assistant's duties necessitates consideration of the collection and providing of personnel information and the use of retired researchers, for instance. Placement agencies and research centers where research assistants are employed must actively promote measures to improve the abilities of research assistants. Funding and other measures must be considered to encourage cooperation among government, industry and academia in this regard.

In addition, research assistants who undergo training or education or who receive certification should see those efforts reflected in their compensation.

Many young researchers hone their research abilities through postdoc research or research experience that involves job mobility. Many, however, do not feel that such experience necessarily translates into better compensation ( Fig. 20 ), while many companies show little desire to employ postdoc researchers. Nonetheless, the effective utilization of such researchers would raise the overall level of Japan's research abilities.

Fig. 20: has mobility in research appointments been a positive factor career formation and subsequent compensation?

Better understanding of the activities of postdoc and other researchers require not just efforts on the part of researchers themselves, but also efforts to raise society's awareness by, for instance, creating a centralized system for databasing the achievements of such researchers and disseminating information.

The globalization of research and development makes foreign researchers an option in R&D personnel. After considering such factors as what form of pension foreign researchers would receive, Japan must create an environment that makes it easier for foreign researchers to work in Japan. When the type of excellent foreign researchers who would be revered by young Japanese and foreign researchers are employed as research leaders, Japan's R&D abilities will rise and the R&D environment will become more intellectually stimulating to Japanese researchers.

As R&D periods are shortened and more and more existing technologies become obsolete, the distance between R&D achievements and marketable products is shorter than ever before. Researchers at universities and national research institutes respond passively regarding the reflection of patents, etc., into research evaluation, indicating the need for measures to incorporate patents into research evaluation in order to motivate researchers to patent the results of their research.

The most effective form by which knowledge can be transferred is for the researcher who made the invention or discovery to participate in the process of using that invention or discovery to benefit society or the economy. Thus, further encouragement and support for researchers wishing to become entrepreneurs or otherwise participate in private-sector activity would heighten researchers' awareness of intellectual assets and prompt researchers to think about what it is society expects of them. To this end, Japan must pursue incentives for such researchers, along with various other efforts, and improve and expand various research support functions, such as assistance with patent applications and other difficult procedures and formalities.