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Part Promotion of Scientific Research

The priority promotion of scientific research from a long term and comprehensive standpoint is vital to making the best use of limited financial and personnel resources, to meeting new demands from scientific development and to coping with rising social demands on scientific research.

The most important factor in this regard is the improvement and strengthening of cooperative research systems. National inter-university research institutes should be further improved and other existing research institutes and research systems should be reorganized to have joint-use capacities. The Ministry's grants-in-aid are also important for the encouragement of interdisciplinary group research activities which involve increasing numbers of researchers from different universities and fields and for the development of "soft research" systems.

Here. one of the urgent issues is the establishment of networks for facilitating research liaison and well coordinated cooperation in the fields involved. The central organ of such a network should be upgraded as a future center of excellence, which will be recognized as such by the international community.

Each university should carefully examine its existing research systems to see if the best use is being made of current research facilities. Measures hitherto proposed in this regard includes promoting flexibility of research systems or reorganizing them into new and more efficient ones, by such a means as the institution of intramural research projects corresponding to the trends of research; the creation of appropriate measures for fair and objective evaluation of existing research systems ; the promotion of joint intra- and inter-university use of large-scale research equipment when possible, etc.

Moreover, although it is a matter of course that scientific research at the university is characterized by integrating teaching and research, universities differ from each other in the importance they attach to research as well as in their ability to carry out research. Therefore, future investigation into the optimal distribution of funds should be promoted in the context of the establishment of centers of excellence'. These efforts should be conducted on the basis of independent judgement of each university.

However, it must be understood that due to the nature of scientific research, placing relatively greater importance on management efficiency with the aim of early realization of research objectives would hamper the long-term development of

research.

In order that policy for the priority promotion of scientific research may be successfully carried out. a mechanism should be set up to accurately grasp scientific research trends and also gain a broad-based and clear understanding of the general inclination of the research environment from various standpoints. For this purpose, the functions of the Ministry of Education. Science and Culture in investigating, planning and policy-forming in relation to scientific research, should be strengthened by such means as the further upgrading and strengthening of the function of the Science Council, an advisory organ to the Minister.

In terms of the practical implementation of programs for promoting scientific research, many of these programs should be flexible in accordance with their specific nature. Also, more attention should be given towards considering the needs and preferences of individual researchers. As the implementing organ of such programs, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science has come to play an increasingly important role, and researchers have placed great expectations on the Society. The further strengthening of the Society is also one of the pressing issues for the future.