tokyo

Japan's Science and Technology Council has called for significant changes in the way university research is carried out. In particular, it wants to create an independent body that would evaluate research externally so as to make it more competitive.

Such a body, according to an interim report on Japan's university research, is needed to compare the quality of research at national universities. The council's report, released at the end of last month, says the results of external evaluations should be reflected in the allocation of government research funds, particularly important given increasing budgetary pressures.

Also included in the report is a plan to create a system by which universities can claim for overheads on research grants. This would allow researchers to use the grants to cover maintenance costs — which take up a substantial share of government research funds — as basic research funds, which are split equally among universities, decline.

The shift towards competitive and peer-reviewed grant schemes is in line with the government's efforts to make Japanese researchers internationally competitive. At present, according to the council, 88 per cent of Japanese universities, and all but one of its 98 national universities, carry out some form of research evaluation, but only a handful use external reviewers (see Nature 397, 378; 1999), most preferring a less stringent self-evaluation system.

Akito Arima, the education minister and director-general of the Science and Technology Agency, had promised to change the situation by setting up an independent body to assess national universities. His decision came in response to the government's proposal to turn national universities into semi-autonomous institutions, a move strongly resisted both by universities and by the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture (Monbusho).

Many researchers support the idea of an external evaluation system, but some are concerned that Monbusho lacks the capacity and experience for this.

“The main concern is whether Monbusho's evaluation criteria would be suitable and relevant for the research fields concerned,” says Robert Geller, associate professor in geophysics at Tokyo University.

Geller was recently instrumental in setting up an external review system for reorganizing the university's four departments into a single department of Earth and planetary physics. The review, the fifth to be carried out at Tokyo University, was conducted by 11 external reviewers, five of whom were from outside Japan.

Geller admits that the review involved an “overwhelming amount of work”. But he says it helped to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each faculty.

“I am hoping that Monbusho is prepared to create a research evaluation system that rates university departments in a given field on a common scale. If they fail to get it right, it would only be an additional burden to university researchers,” he says.