MyVision

No.19 2016.3

Disruptive Innovation in
the Domain of Knowledge
Information technology is driving a process of disruptive innovation in academic
research throughout the world. The development of platforms to support research,chieﬂy using English as a shared language, is leading to an increase in joint research across national borders. If Japan falls behind in this new digital realm of
academic research, it may negatively affect the nation’s interests. How can Japanboost its research capacity and take the initiative in this area internationally?

CONTENTS
Expert Opinions

How can We Promote Scientific and Academic
Research that is Open to Society?
We must increase Japanʼs presence Advance the creation of a digitalin the area of knowledge platforms archive of cultural resources
Jiro Kokuryo

Naoto Ikegai

Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio
University

Project Assistant Professor, New Library ProjectOﬃce, University Library, Interfaculty Initiative inInformation Studies, The University of Tokyo

The changing realm of scholarship
Keiko Kurata

Professor, Faculty of Letters, Keio University

Open science will generateparadigm shifts
Kazuhiro Hayashi

Senior Research Fellow, National Instituteof Science & Technology Policy, Ministry of
Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology

About this Issue

Reiko Kanda

Invigorating “citizen science”
Tadashi Komatsu

Representative, Komatsu Research Oﬃce

Expert Opinions

How can We Promote Scientiﬁc and Academic
Research that is Open to Society?
The evolution of IT is opening the world of academia to the broader social field, promoting a revolutionthat might be termed “disruptive innovation.” How is the world of academic research changing? And how
should Japan regain lost ground as the US and Europe take the leadership in the process? In this issueof, we seek opinions from scholars in the fields of information systems and the distribution ofacademic data, in addition to an independent researcher.

Interviewer: Chiharu Hagi, NIRA Research Coordinator & Assistant
Editor: Kazuyoshi Harada
Period of interviews: November - December 2015

We must increase Japanʼs presence in the areaof knowledge platforms
Jiro Kokuryo

copyright and intellectual property. Conducting research and writing papers involves expense, and it is therefore necessary to create
mechanisms to defray costs, making it possible to freely use data
while also enabling the cost of its production to be recovered. ■Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University

Professor Kokuryo is a leading figure in the field of research on IT and management, and was an early proponent of the importance of platforms. He
has made a significant contribution to policy as a member of a series ofgovernment committees, including the Expert Evaluative Committee of
the IT Strategic Headquarters.

In today’s academic world, competition is intensifying among US
and European IT companies and publishing houses including Google, Elsevier, and Thomson Reuters for control over platforms forthe presentation of specialist academic journals which have been
digitized. This process has moved beyond the scope of services forthe presentation of academic articles, and we are at the stage at
which platforms that will provide support for research itself are being formed. Joint research making use of these platforms is increasing beyond national borders.
No Japanese companies are involved in the competition for control over these research platforms. In Japan, we seek to protect vested interests and remain committed to existing businesses, and there
is little drive to open up new worlds. In order to create new businesses, it will be essential to develop human resources who understandboth IT and the direction of scientific research, and are able to use
these to drive business enterprises.
Leaving this situation unaddressed will have a significant negative effect on scholarship in Japan. If the national difficulty in communicating in English makes Japan an outsider in the international
academic realm, and the nation’s universities and researchers cometo be poorly regarded worldwide, it will represent an enormous
problem for the development of science in Japan. What the nationmust do is boost its ability to communicate in English-language
platforms, while at the same time taking the initiative in guiding thedirection of multilingual platforms.
We must also seek methods by which researchers can balance theability to make free use of papers and data, while also respecting

The changing realm of scholarship
Keiko Kurata
Professor, Faculty of Letters, Keio University
Two changes are occurring in the realm of scholarship. One ofthese changes is that researchers are now able to freely read scientific and academic papers on the Internet. This “open access” has beensteadily gaining ground over the past 10 to 15 years. The authors ofacademic papers now have their work read by a greater number offellow researchers and ordinary members of the public, and thisworks in favor of the advancement of science. However, this newmode of free publication of research outcomes does not always meshsmoothly with existing social systems, for example the retention of
copyright by publishers. There is also the issue of the cost of digitization of papers. These are not issues that researchers will be able toresolve by themselves.
Another revolutionary change is the trend towards not merely
sharing outcomes as represented by papers, but freely publishingand sharing research data, allowing other researchers to make freeuse of it. This is called “open data.” The issues here are the feelingon the part of researchers that data are their own property, and uncertainty regarding the scope for publication of data and methods of

My Vision No.19

doing so.
This tide of dramatic change is valuable, even if it breaks down
the relationships between publishers, university libraries and researchers which have been created over the course of the years. In
the US, strong taxpayer awareness functions to drive the publicationof research outcomes and data. In Japan, there is little public interestin research outcomes which have been funded by taxes, and thus noimpetus towards change. It would be desirable for Japanese industry
to become aware, as is happening overseas, that the provision ofservices by private companies in the world of academia is a developing business area, and is also becoming essential to scholarship.
Because Japan has no relevant laws or systems in place in this area
at present, it is precisely the time to proceed with systematization in
the form of the promotion of businesses. Rather than leaving responses in this area to individual universities, society as a wholeshould play a role to make open access a reality. ■Professor Kurata studies trends in scholarly communication with a focus on
information media. From an early stage, she has drawn attention to Japan’s
delay in responding to a situation in which the rapid progress of digitizationis changing the nature of the distribution of academic information.

Open science will generate paradigm shifts
Kazuhiro Hayashi
Senior Research Fellow,
National Institute of Science & Technology Policy,
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology
The first publication of scientific journals in the 17th century, following Gutenberg’s printing revolution, made it possible to present
scientific information to an overwhelmingly greater number ofreaders than was the case in previous eras, when the transmission ofscientific information relied on the production of handwritten copies. A comparable paradigm shift is occurring in the world of scientific research today, with the development of information and communication technologies. Not only have scientific and academic
papers become digital, and thus able to be freely accessed and used,
but research activities involving data previously restricted to individual researchers are becoming more open to the broader community. We are entering an era of “open science”. This series of trends
can be considered to represent a process of “disruptive innovation”
in the world of science.
We are in a period of transition, the culmination of a process ofchange in the nature of scientific research which has been taking
place over the course of several hundred years. This presents us with
an opportunity to create new industries. The increasing number ofscientific and academic papers being published and the oligopoly ofcommercial publishing houses means that libraries are becoming
unable to cover spiraling purchase costs. Open science policies arebeing formulated in order to address this situation, with Europe
leading the world. Japan must develop strategic policy plans, sharing risk with private companies, before new frameworks solidify, or
it will be difficult for the nation to take the initiative in either thedomain of scientific research or the world of private enterprise.
Japan has incorporated open science in the Fifth Science andTechnology Basic Plan, making the nation appear to be standing on
equal ground with the US and Europe in terms of policy. The reality,
however, is that many researchers in Japan still feel a resistance towards the sharing of research data. It will therefore be essential toundertake initiatives in order to enlighten researchers, to ensure thatthey understand that the sharing of research data functions to theirbenefit, bringing rewards including higher standing in the researchcommunity. ■Mr. Hayashi is involved in policy science research, and attempts to educate
the scientific community regarding the importance of reform in the area ofthe circulation of scientific data. Making use of his knowledge of chemistry
and his IT skills, he contributed to the pioneering digitization and commercialization of the journal of the Chemical Society of Japan.

Advance the creation of a digital archive of
cultural resources
Naoto Ikegai
Project Assistant Professor, New Library Project Office,
University Library, Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies,
The University of Tokyo
Efforts are proceeding in countries throughout the world, in particular in the US and Europe, to create digital archives of tangible
and intangible cultural resources that will be published on the Internet and made available to all users. The Europeana platform in the
EU is a representative example, recording over 30 million cultural
items. These can be viewed free of charge by any user, and the information made available can be used for research or business purposes.
In Japan also, individual organizations are creating digital archives, for example the National Diet Library (NDL Search) and the
Agency for Cultural Affairs (Cultural Heritage Online). However,given that none of these archives integrates cultural resources fromthroughout the entire nation, and there are restrictions on rights toreuse the published data, Japan cannot boast a platform that matches
Europeana.
Momentum in this area has been strong in Japan, but factors including budgetary restrictions have meant that ongoing projects
have not materialized. The major difference between initiatives inJapan and Europe has been the fact that Europeana has been supported by the activities of intermediate organizations (aggregators)
which integrate the data provided by individual cultural institutions.
The expense involved can make it extremely difficult for each cultural institution involved to retain specialists in fields such as law
and digital technology; the existence of aggregators means that thisis not necessary.
The formation of networks to provide personal, intellectual, andtechnical support will be important to digital archiving efforts inJapan. In order to do so, we will need to foster human resources able
to link the domain of traditional culture with the world of information technology. ■Assistant Professor Ikegai is an expert on digital archiving initiatives in Europe and the US. As a member of The University of Tokyo’s New Library
Project team, he is working towards the realization of a Japanese version of
the Europeana platform.

Invigorating “citizen science”

Tadashi Komatsu

Representative, Komatsu Research Office
The diffusion of online tools is having a profound effect on science. Not only are the ways in which scientific discoveries madechanging, but the relationship between science and society is also
undergoing significant changes. One of these changes is the adventof “citizen science.” This refers to the involvement of ordinary citi-zens in the collection and analysis of data in order to support scientific research. Citizen involvement has always been an aspect of the
US and Europe; the increase in online activity has made this involvement more visible in the realm of science, and further invigorated the phenomenon. “Galaxy Zoo,” a project in which citizens
participate in the classification of images of galaxies, and “eBird,” inwhich citizens provide data regarding their observation of birds, canbe pointed to as representative examples.
By contrast, the presence of citizen science is low in Japanesesociety as a whole. The difficulty of using the relevant interfaces isa major factor in this. For example, a participatory survey of Japanese bird and animal life conducted by the Ministry of the Environment asked citizens to upload photographs that they had taken; however, users found the operability of the interface extremely poor incomparison to existing SNS interfaces. If the Ministry had engaged
the cooperation of private SNS companies, it would have been able
to provide more user-friendly tools, making it easier for citizens toparticipate. What is more, using the knowledge and expertise of
these companies, the experience could have been made more enjoyable, contributing to greater public involvement. If it was able todraw in children and the elderly, this type of cooperation between

private enterprise, government, and academia could invigorate citizen science in Japan also. There is also still room for new initiatives
to emerge from Japan and spread to the US and Europe.
The state of Japan’s public finances will presumably make it impossible to expect scholarship, including scientific research, to be
fully government funded in the future. Given this, citizen science
will represent an important factor in boosting the nation’s scientificcapacity. ■As an independent researcher who is also a business proprietor, Dr. Komatsu conducts research under contract for various research institutes. He proposes a specifically Japanese combination of national strengths such as
online gaming and the organization of circles with shared interests, withcitizen science.

This is a translation of a paper originally published in Japanese.
NIRA bears full responsibility for the translation presented here.
Translated by Michael Faul.

About this Issue

Disruptive Innovation in the Domain of Knowledge

The Internet is generating radical change in the area of scientific research, a process which is being dubbed “the open science revolution.” The concept of “open science” has received
particular attention since the 2011 publication of Reinventing
Discovery by the theoretical physicist Michael Nielsen. It is anexperiment in transforming scientific research, which is all too
easily confined in the ivory tower, into something more open to
the broader society.
However, we cannot be unreservedly optimistic about thistide of change, because it holds the potential to significantly
change the existing research and business environments. For
example, Elsevier, the publisher of international scientific journals, is now digitizing its specialist papers, and making themavailable on the Internet for a fee. University libraries and research institutions have to establish expensive contracts in orderto access these materials.
Another change of particular note is the fact that Elsevier’s
parent company, the RELX Group, is using its holdings of academic data and its extensive network to create businesses offering science and technology-related, content-related, and data
analysis-related solutions to clients. The Group’s revenues wereclose to one trillion yen in 2014, demonstrating that an under-

standing of scientific data also grants an advantage in business.
As indicated by the five experts interviewed in this issue of
My Vision, it is clear that the response to be made to the transitional phase represented by open science is not an issue for individual universities or researchers. Precisely because this is atransitional phase in which the necessary systems and rules
have not been established in the market, Japanese society as awhole must bring its collective intelligence to bear on seeking
measures that will enable it to obtain the benefits of open science.
Japan faces numerous problems that must be overcome,among them a delay in efforts towards the digitization of data by
publishing companies, a lack of awareness on the part of researchers regarding the publication of outcomes, and a lack ofventure companies seeking to provide technologies. But all ofthese problems can be solved. Precisely now is the time whenrepresentatives of diverse fields, including publishing houses,
universities, government, and the world of industry, must cometogether in order to work towards the open science revolution.
Reiko Kanda, NIRA Executive Vice President

National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA)
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