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Regarding Japan's R&D evaluation, guidelines have been formulated for the general R&D that is conducted at national expenditure -- "National Guideline on the Method of Evaluation for R&D." For the purpose of implementing further effective R&D evaluations, these guidelines call for the introduction of external evaluation, the disclosure of evaluation results, and the appropriate allocation of R&D resources such as research funds.

Extensive implementation of the evaluation in line with these guidelines will result in the prioritised and efficient allocation of limited fiscal funds, and the realization of flexible, competitive and open R&D environment. And furthermore, we can gain understanding and support of the public for R&D investment.

Regarding the evaluation of universities, self-examination and self-evaluation are being conducted at most of universities. In addition, they commenced evaluation projects in fiscal 2000 by the use of their mechanism of both university evaluation and the conferment of academic degrees.

For the purpose of further enrichment and improvement of the evaluation, we should aim to secure necessary funds and develop evaluation system and structure up to the substantial standard of Euro-American countries. The differing scale of researches should be taken into consideration to conduct an efficient evaluation that a large-scale research, for instance, goes through stricter evaluation. It is also required to reflect evaluation results in strict fairness in the allocation of research expense funds (the increase, continuation, reduction, or termination of research funds).