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Home > Policy > White Paper, Notice, Announcement > White Paper > JAPANESE GOVERMENT POLICICIES IN EDUCATION, SCIENCE AND CULTURE 1994 > PART II Chapter 6 Section 8 2

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PART II Recent Trends and Developments in Government Policies in Education, Science and Culture
Chapter 6. Promoting Scientific Research
Section 8. Promoting International Scientific Exchange in Which Japan Takes the Initiative
2. Promoting International Joint Research and Researcher Exchange


The number of fields and themes that require cooperative research by many countries has increased in recent years, leading to the expansion of both bilateral international joint research and multilateral international joint research through international organizations and international scientific groups. The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture is actively promoting bilateral international joint research. One example of this approach is a joint-research project between Japan and the United Kingdom relating to next-generation high-performance elements. The full-scale implementation of this project, which was the result of a Japanese proposal, began in fiscal 1994.

Japan is also an active participant in GOOS, a UNESCO project; the IGBP, proposed by the International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU); and various other international projects. Japan's role in UNESCO programs has been especially important. In addition to contributing trust funds for natural-science projects in Asia and the Pacific, Japan has made a major contribution to research and training activities in these regions.

Japan also supports international joint research, scientific surveys, and other activities carried out by individual groups of researchers in a wide range of fields through funding provided under the international scientific research category of the grants-in-aid for scientific research system. The efforts of the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture to promote such activities are reflected in the fact that the number of projects approved for assistance in fiscal 1994 increased by 119 over the previous fiscal year, to 928.

Researcher exchange helps to build relationships of trust among individual researchers and can lead to joint research. Exchange among young researchers is extremely significant as a means of fostering creativity, while international research gatherings provide reciprocal scientific stimulation and valuable opportunities to disseminate scientific information from Japan to the rest of the world. The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture promotes researcher-exchange activities, including researcher-exchange programs operated by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and systems to send Japanese researchers overseas or invite foreign researchers to Japan.

The Ministry also sends researchers to international research gatherings in other countries and provides grants and other assistance to help defray the costs of international symposiums hosted by Japanese national universities. In fiscal 1992 the number of researchers sent overseas under Ministry programs increased by approximately 800, to 8,461. There was also an increase of about 500 in the number of foreign researchers invited to universities and other institutions in Japan. The total was 4,670 ( Table II.6.8).


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