Tokyo

Japanese researchers should place greater emphasis on the quality of their scientific papers rather than their quantity, and make more effort to publish in international journals and to communicate with foreign researchers. These are the conclusions of a survey released last week by the Science and Technology Agency (STA).

Although 63.5 per cent of the 416 researchers surveyed said that they prefer to submit papers to journals with high impact factors, 26.2 per cent do not consider impact factors as important. This reflects the fact that some institutes — particularly national laboratories and universities — still consider the total output of papers as the main criterion for assessing research activities.

The report also shows that only about 40 per cent of Japanese researchers communicate with foreign researchers using electronic mail or faxes — and a similar proportion appear not to communicate with foreign researchers at all.

The report is based on a survey of researchers at universities and private and government institutes in Japan who produced scientific papers between March 1998 and March 1999. Those who participated in the survey produced an average of two papers during this period, with university researchers tending to produce more papers than those at private institutes, according to the report.

Japan produced more than 10 per cent of the total output of scientific papers in the 1997 index of the Institute for Scientific Information, ranking second after the United States. But a separate analysis based on average citations per paper placed Japan seventeenth, and below the world average.

The STA report raises concern over the number of Japanese researchers who do not publish in international journals, and says that more active participation in international publishing should be encouraged.

The survey revealed that about 40 per cent of the researchers only submit papers to Japanese publications, while 34.1 per cent also submit to international journals.

The survey also shows that only 20 per cent communicate regularly with overseas researchers. Of these, 39 per cent use e-mail, faxes and letters, while 24 per cent say they only communicate in person, and only 0.2 per cent do so by telephone.

“Considering the advances in information technology, I am surprised that more researchers do not use e-mail,” says one STA official. “I cannot believe that some still depend on direct person-to-person contact as a means of communicating with overseas researchers.”

The report says that Japanese researchers tend to be poor at communicating with overseas researchers. This is one reason for their relative lack of involvement in international science.