URA in Japan
As of November 2018

This is a brief summary translation of the report on “URA in Japan” written in Japanese by:
Mr. Naotoshi Ikemi, administrator at Science Department, Kyushu University, andProf. Akiya Nagata, Professor of Economics, Kyushu University.
The report was made with a Kakenhi award (curiosity driven-type competitive fund) from theJapan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The original report in Japanese is uploadedon the website of the Center for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Studies (CSTIPS),
one of the SciREX core centers, to widely seek comments (http://www.sti.kyushuu.ac.jp/?q=node/42). The above writers are responsible for the contents, and Kyushu
University and CSTIPS are not. Also, the summarizing and translating responsibility is withKazuko Nakata (k-nakata@grips.ac.jp), translator at the SciREX Center. The summary translation
was made to be uploaded on the SciREX Center website to widely share how the URA system
was introduced to Japan, how it is currently run, and what the challenges are.
Preface
Six years have passed since the University Research Administrator (URA) system wasintroduced to Japan. As the job was new to the universities, the URAs had difficulties in
identifying their presence within the university systems when they took the URA positions.
They have, however, gradually found the areas they can be active, including designing researchsupport systems and supporting to obtain research funds. Also, it took time, but the university
members gradually learned what the URAs do. Nonetheless, the faculty members are still
complaining that they do not have sufficient research support, while the intent of establishinga URA system was to lighten the faculty members’ burdens consumed for administrative work.
This may be improved by reviewing URA roles.
This paper begins with the birth of URAs in Japan followed by a review on the job URAs areactive, and analyzes the interview results to finally come up with the challenges in the future.
Introduction and Development of URAs in JapanThe conventional Japanese government’s system of providing non-competitive research funds

to national universities (they are currently national university corporations and the number is82) began to decrease since the enactment of the law to change the national universities’
status to independent entities (corporations) in 2004. This meant that they were no longernational entities and should gradually explore the way to be independent from the government
to ultimately totally independent some time in a distant future. The total amount of such noncompetitive funds was Yen 1,241.5 billion in 2004 and Yen 1,112.3 billion in 2016, 10 percent
decrease in a decade. Facing this reduction, the first thing each national university corporation
did was to cut the human resources costs. This has inevitably brought more administrative
work and less research time to faculty members. The data compiled by the Japanese Ministryof Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) shows that the faculty members
spared 46.5 percent of their work hours for their research before 2004, and it went down to35.0 percent in 2013.
In addition to the human resources cut, the decrease of the non-competitive research funds
considerably reduced the education and research activities at the national universitycorporations. To keep up with the research activities, the faculty members had to obtaincompetitive funds from the government funding agencies and private foundations. This hasbrought them additional work for collecting competitive funds information and filling in theapplication forms. Thus, human resources who handle the funds from outside began to becalled for. Also, to obtain more funds from the government, the universities began to recognize
the need of human resources who can work on institutional research (IR).
To try to solve the above issues, the Japanese Government’s 4th Science, Technology andInnovation Basic Plan (covering JFY2011-2015) included an establishment of a URA system in its
passage: “Japan will train and secure Research Administrators who take care of themanagement of overall R&D activities with their expertise; Science Technicians who take careof technical work and knowledge base-maintenance of research; and Intellectual Properties
Experts.”
To realize the above, MEXT launched in 2011 a program “Preparation for a system for training
and securing research administrators.” Seventeen universities obtained the fund and began toemploy URAs and establish URA skill standards and URA training programs. Also, the MEXT’sprogram established in 2013 to strengthen Research Universities accelerated this movement,
as the 22 institutions that were successful in obtaining the grant began to hire URAs. Inaddition, MEXT’s plan to see at least 10 Japanese universities among the top 100 world
university ranking in 10 years made all the universities be concerned with the ranking andbegan to analyze how to attain the goal by reviewing of their management.
Many universities have since then followed the trend of hiring URAs, resulting in having a totalof as many as 830 URAs at the universities across the nation as of 2018.
Survey to URAs (Table 1)
To learn the URAs’ job, we interviewed 25 URAs at 9 universities. Table 1 is the interview result
by breaking down their work into 4 categories: research strategy promotion; pre-award; postaward; and others.
It shows the URA’s job covers diverse areas across the university. One of them is to check theapplication form for competitive funds. When the application is for cross university-type or
education support-type or internationalization-type programs, the URA needs to visit andcoordinate with many other departments or divisions. Some URAs use their expertise theygained in their previous jobs. Examples are that those who were previously involved in public
relations take care of the public relations of the research at the university; those who werepreviously working at an overseas office of a foreign-capital companies take care of establishinga new office overseas; or those who were planning events take care of having events that
introduce the research to the public.
Survey to Faculty Members (Table2)
To know the faculty members’ expectation for URAs, we made a survey to 146 faculty members
at the Kyushu University Graduate School of Science and Graduate School of Mathematics, andreceived 125 replies (85.6% response rate). The breakdown of the 125 replies is as follows:
35.2% from professors, 34.4 from associate professor, 4.8% from lecturers, and 25.6% fromassistant professors. Viewed by field, 24.0% in physics, 23.2% in chemistry, 18.4% in earth andplanetary sciences, 15.2% in biology, and 19.2% in mathematics. Also, 89.6% was male and10.4% was female. The survey result is summarized in Table 2.

Table 1: URA job(Number of persons who replied YES)
Job

In DetailSupport toUniversity research capability analysis using analyzing tools

1

promote research

Research strategy planning

15strategy

Planning of a young researcher support system

1Competitive funds information gathering and sharing

3

Checking the competitive funds application forms

12

Editing the charts to be used for the competitive funds application forms

1

Rehearsal of interview for competitive funds’ review process

2

Internal coordination in applying for cross university-type competitive funds

4

Arrangements of research public outreach events

2

Internal coordination for implementing cross university-type large programs

3

Project management and operation of competitive research funds

7

Opening of an overseas office1

Website establishment for a research team1

Coordination with companies for pursuing collaborative research1

Coordination in establishing industry-university research consortium

1

Arrangements for intellectual property licensing

2

Industrialization of research results

1

Arrangements for holding informal gathering for faculty members

3

Researcher interview articles for public relations magazines

1

Share of research results with overseas media

1

Confirmation of the contents for international legal documents

1Pre-award

Post-award

OthersYes

Table 2: Faculty members’ wish list and the support received(Number of YES (%)) N=125
Support item

Wish to besupportedEver
supportedby URAs

Ever
supportedby nonURA staff

Information gathering on competitive funds opportunities

55 (44.0%)

3 (2.4%)25 (20.0%)

Editing the application for competitive funds

54 (43.2%)

6 (4.8%)27 (21.6%)

Management of and report writing for competitive funds

60 (48.0%)

0 (0.0%)33 (26.4%)

Coordination with collaborative researchers

16 (12.8%)

0 (0.0%)9 (7.2%)

Coordination of projects in interdisciplinary fields

27 (21.6%)

4 (3.2%)7 (5.6%)

Coordination with companies and local governments

24 (19.2%)

2 (1.6%)8 (6.4%)

Coordination of the meetings between faculty members

11 (8.8%)

1 (0.8%)7 (5.6%)

Management of research progress

4 (3.2%)0 (0.0%)8 (6.4%)

Management of the goods in the lab

50 (40.0%)

0 (0.0%)28 (22.4%)

39 (31.2%)

0 (0.0%)18 (14.4%)

Search for related research materials

12 (9.6%)

0 (0.0%)9 (7.2%)

Edition of papers in English

54 (43.2%)

0 (0.0%)39 (31.2%)

Edition of presentation slides

17 (13.6%)

0 (0.0%)10 (8.0%)

14 (11.2%)

0 (0.0%)2 (1.6%)

Coordination in case of holding symposia

69 (55.2%)

0 (0.0%)16 (12.8%)

Public relation activities of research results (press release)50 (40.0%)

3 (2.4%)14 (11.2%)

Intellectual properties and commercialization of research results

29 (23.2%)

3 (2.4%)8 (6.4%)

Negotiation with universities overseas on research agreements

28 (22.4%)

1 (0.8%)7 (5.6%)

Promotion of receiving foreign students

23 (18.4%)

0 (0.0%)9 (7.2%)Care of foreign students and researchers

56 (44.8%)

0 (0.0%)23 (18.4%)

Coordination for visiting lectures and outreach activities

27 (21.6%)

0 (0.0%)11 (8.8%)

Networking for the student alumni

10 (8.0%)0 (0.0%)3 (2.4%)

Collection of materials needed for faculty evaluation

33 (26.4%)

0 (0.0%)8 (6.4%)

Collection of materials for evaluating mid-term goals and plans

31 (24.8%)

1 (0.8%)9 (7.2%)

Maintenance of research equipment and operation guidance tothe students

Submission of official papers for experiments on animals andgene editing

Further analyses of Table 2
To see the faculty members’ potential needs of URAs and how the work is currently performed
by non-URA staff members, further analyses were made. The result shows that the following
items have high expectations of support by faculty members, but are currently not supported
by URAs, and could potential be supported by URAs:
1. Management of and report writing for competitive funds,
2. Coordination in case of holding symposia, and
3. Care of foreign students and researchers.
Factor Analysis
To make it clearer what kind of expertise is needed to accomplish the support expected by thefaculty members, a factor analysis was conducted with the factor selection made based on
Varimax rotation. The factors 1 through 6 were as follows:
1-Competitive funds,
2-Internaitonalization,
3-Evaluation activities,4-Network management,
5-Industry-university collaboration, and6-Research management.
The factor analysis result showed that the faculty member’s need for support is broader than
the job categories defined as URA’s roles. (The original report contains two factor analysis
tables, but are omitted here in a summary translation.)
Follow-up Survey
Of the 125 respondents, 114 members were visited with further questions. As to the reason forchoosing “coordination in case of holding symposia,” they said that holding a symposium isaccompanied by a huge amount of work with sufficient number of staff members, which
discourages them to have an idea of holding any symposia. The work includes coordination ofspeech contents, preparation of air tickets, visits to the university’s accounting division,
honorarium payment to the guest speakers. These university-specific details make it difficult tooutsource the whole job.
As to the research equipment, such large-scale equipment as Nuclear Magnetic ResonanceApparatus that is widely used in Science Department is not used every day, but requires a lot offaculty members’ and students’ time for maintenance and management. This makes them wish
to have an expert like a lab manager at U.S. research institutions who is an expert to manage
and maintain research equipment and provide operation guidance to lab users.
As to the management of goods in the labs, it was made clear that they need management ofreagents rather than general consumer goods, as the access to those reagents is limited to thefaculty members.
Discussion
As said above, the factor analysis result implies that the support required by the faculty
members on URAs is beyond the already-defined URA roles. This may lead the definition ofURA job to include diversity and ambiguity reserved as “a third area,” as it is not possible for all
the expertise needed by faculty members to be accomplished by URAs. On the other hand,
having ambiguity in the URA’s job description may keep the training and career development ofURAs unclear, which may result in hindrance for identifying URA roles. To avoid this, thechallenge would be to sort out the job that could not be accomplished by non-URAs and havethe URAs focus on that area.
An example would be that among the items that the faculty members wish to be supported,“management of competitive research funds and report making,” “coordination when holdingsymposia,” and “taking care of foreign students and researchers” were the top three items
most of the faculty members said have not received sufficient support either by the URAs nor
the non-URAs.
Among these three items, “management of competitive research funds and report making”
has been in the “post-award” job for URAs and it would be important to remind it.
The “Coordination when holding symposia” requires a comprehensive ability to understand theresearch contents, although not fully, to be versed with the various university regulations, andto connect all the players from participants through administrative staff. As the conventional
university system does not have a personnel with such talents, it would be ideal for URAs torespond to such needs.
A report by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy (NISTEP) points that thenumber of internationally co-authored papers is increasing, but Japan is not ready to catch up

with the trend. With more number of international symposia to be held in Japan that brings
more opportunities for the Japanese researchers exchange ideas with foreign researchers, thenumber of co-authored papers would increase. The result of the factor analysis shows that the“coordination when holding symposia” is not much related with the factors of “competitive
research funds” nor “internationalization.” This means that the faculty members’ believe thatholding international symposia is different from and not connected with the post-award
activities nor creation of international research exchange. URAs could change the faculty
members’ recognition by being more proactive in holding international symposia and havethem understand that those factors are all related.
The “taking care of foreign students and researchers” may be the item that URAs would haveto commit as it is in line with promoting internationalization, but taking every-day life of andproviding psychological support to foreign students might require other kinds of expertise. For
this reason URAs would remain to take care of their “research” support.
The “research management, including management of goods in the lab, maintenance of
research equipment and guidance of the operation to the students, and application to obtain
official approval for conducting animal experiments or genetic recombination” is also the itemthat the faculty members said has not been supported by URAs. They expressed their wish tohave support for such an advanced research-related job that cannot be handled by theconventional administrative staff members. This will require further discussions as to whether
URAs should take care of the job or not, as the type of support differs depending on theresearch field.
CONCLUSION:
The role of URAs differs depending on the size of the university, expertise of the faculty
members, and the university organization chart. However, finding the elements of the needs
for support that are common among the universities and faculty members would help to makethe role of URAs clearer and make their functions more visible. The survey made this time waslimited to the faculty members of the Kyushu University’s Science Departments. To generalize
the data, the survey needs to be expanded to other universities and academic disciplines.
A closer partnership between the faculty members and URAs will help strengthen the researchabilities of Japanese universities and attain the MEXT’s goal of finding them among the top 10universities in the world.