PICES Press Vol. 22, No. 2

North Pacific Marine Science Organization

More attractive science ecosystem design for FUTURE and beyond:
A personal view from a researcher in a peripheral fieldby Shoshiro Minobe
The central topic of the PICES FUTURE science programis ecosystems, and interestingly, the importance of the term
“ecosystem” has rapidly increased during the last halfdecade in the business world, particularly in theinformation technology (IT) field, where it has a quite
different meaning from that used in PICES. In a simplified
view, an IT ecosystem is an interaction system among ITvendors (e.g., Apple or Google), third-party softwaredevelopers and service providers (hereinafter, providers),
users, and investors. If an ecosystem is attractive, a larger
number of providers will join it with the help of investors,
which in turn provides better and more desirable “apps”(software applications) or services than in otherecosystems. Such an ecosystem attracts a larger number ofusers, and this movement further drives more providers andinvestors to join the ecosystem. It should be apparent thatecosystem development in business involves positive
feedback—the so-called snowball effect—and therefore, agood design for an ecosystem is crucial for its continuing
development.

models and data sets) produced by internal researchers byreviewing and citing papers and by reviewing research
proposals.
By making this analogy between science ecosystems andIT ecosystems, it becomes apparent that the design ofscience ecosystems is a crucial factor in attracting
researchers and facilitating their work. A primary strategy
commonly used by science organizations and projects is todetermine some direction, such as by setting importantresearch topics and establishing working groups, and thenhope that researchers actually work along those directions
by obtaining funding from the usual funding agencies ofeach country and the institute’s internal research budget.
This strategy works when two conditions are met:(1) researchers are motivated to do research in thosedirections; and (2) the researchers can obtain funding for
conducting the actual research.
I will begin with the first condition. What kind of research
topic is motivating to researchers? This can be an overly
broad question, and so I would like to pose a more specificquestion that would be appropriate for multidisciplinaryorganizations and projects such as FUTURE: Is aresearcher motivated more strongly by a research topic forwhich one can play a leading role, or by a topic for which
one plays a secondary or smaller role? If researchers needto spend substantial time and money on a topic, then I
believe that researchers will want a leading role. Suchleading activities give a researcher career achievements andpublications, which influence future evaluations frompeers, improve the ability to secure funding, and canultimately determine the trajectory of a career. Of course,
sometimes it is desirable to play a secondary role.
Personally, I have enjoyed being a co-author of ecosystem
papers, contributing by analyzing physical climate data toelucidate linkages in the ecosystem data provided bymarine ecosystem researchers. For me, such experiences
are wonderful and bring a broader perspective, but mydevotion to them cannot be equally compared with studies
in which I play a leading role.

Similarly, we can argue that science organizations andprojects such as PICES and FUTURE have their own
ecosystems. In a simplified form, a science ecosystem
consists of a science organization or project and its internal
researchers (providers); external researchers and otherstakeholders (users); and the funding agencies and homeinstitutes of researchers that provide research funds(investors). The IT ecosystem metaphor is useful when
considering science ecosystems because of several
important points of commonality. First, providers andresearchers can choose which ecosystems to join. For an
IT/science ecosystem, most providers and researchers canmove relatively freely among ecosystems. This mobility
may be the most important difference between IT/science
ecosystems and biological ecosystems. In biologicalecosystems, species do not have the freedom to select anecosystem. Second, IT vendors and science organizations
cannot directly control the behavior of providers andresearchers, respectively, because the former does notdirectly pay the latter. Of course, there are somenoteworthy differences between science and IT ecosystems.
In a science ecosystem, money used for research comesfrom investors and not from users; in an IT ecosystem, incontrast, the role of investors is relatively small because
users pay the providers for apps and services. Despite thedifference in the relation of users to money, users ofscience and IT ecosystems play a common and importantrole. Users in an IT ecosystem evaluate the services andproducts by buying them, while users in a science
ecosystem evaluate science papers and products (e.g.,
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There is an asymmetry among disciplines in opportunities
to assume a leading role according to the goals of specificdisciplines. Typically, for multidisciplinary studies thatinvolve ecosystem researchers and physical researchers, themain goals are in the domain of marine ecosystems, andthus physical researchers play only a secondary or service
role. Collaborative research between physical researchers
and biological researchers thus entails a collaboration inwhich physical researchers assist the ecosystem researchers
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PICES Press Vol. 22, No. 2in their goals. This assist-goal asymmetry needs to beclearly recognized if a good research ecosystem design isto be achieved. Furthermore, for such collaborations,
physical researchers have to be invited to join, that is, thisis a passive collaboration for the physical researchers. An
uninvited physical researcher has nothing to do but wait. To
motivate those researchers whose role is to assist inreaching an overarching goal, it is important to set visible
intermediate goals, such as specific research topic
questions on which the researchers actively play leadingroles and do not need to wait to be invited. Intermediate
goals must be adequate for publishing scientific papers anddeveloping research proposals for researchers who work
toward these goals. Such intermediate goals are morenecessary for the peripheral disciplines than for the central
disciplines in a research ecosystem because the primarygoals are usually squarely within the central disciplines.
By working on those intermediate goals, the peripheral
discipline researchers (here, physical researchers) cancontribute to the achievement of the overall goals for the
project actively.

or project should advertise widely to users by multiple
methods, such as the web, brochures, and sessions or town
hall meetings at major conferences. In addition toincreasing the likelihood of funding, selling a topic to abroader audience is attractive even for internal researchers
because such promotion can increase the impact of theresearcher’s studies.
A natural question at this point is whether PICES does agood job of marketing its science to users. The answer
depends on the discipline. FUTURE is targeted to marine
ecosystems, and so it is reasonable that the influence isgreater in marine ecosystem studies than in physicaloceanography and climate research, to which my own
experience is limited. I would imagine that questions listed
in the FUTURE Science Plan may be useful for funding
proposals in marine ecosystem studies. Unfortunately, it isdifficult for me to use the FUTURE Science Plan andImplementation Plan in my own funding proposals, which
will be reviewed by physical oceanographers ormeteorologists in a Japanese funding system similar to thatof the United States’ National Science Foundation. Thisdifficulty is associated with the lack of intermediate goals
in physical disciplines, as discussed above. The
advertisement of the FUTURE Science Plan to the broader
research community is not bad, but there is room forfurther improvement. For example, the World Climate
Research Program’s ocean-related core project CLIVAR(Climate and Oceans: Variability, Predictability andChange) advertises their science to external scientists in a
number of major science conferences such as the American
Geophysical Union (AGU) fall meeting, the American
Meteorological Society annual meeting, and the OceanSciences Meeting. CLIVAR also provides an impressive
web page describing their research themes, which arecalled research foci, and a beautiful brochure. In fact, I
noticed a research focus of regional sea-level rise that
seemed likely to have a good chance of getting funding,even though I have not been actually involved in it. A
funding proposal that I wrote in association with that focus
successfully received modest four-year funding.

Let us now discuss point (2): How can scienceorganizations and projects help to increase the chances ofobtaining funding? This is important because “no funding”
often means “no research,” especially for researchers who
have to depend on outside funding. From the above
discussion on the leading and assistive roles, it is apparent
that science organizations or projects must establish
intermediate goals for a peripheral discipline, if they wantresearchers in those peripheral disciplines to contribute tothe overarching goals with funding they can use for thosegoals. Without intermediate goals, peripheral researchers
cannot write their own funding proposals. Anotherimportant point is to increase funding opportunities;
science organizations and projects must advertise and sell
their science to users. If users such as external researchers
are impressed by the research direction and results, thenthis will cause a favorable evaluation of the direction in thescience community. Additionally, external researchers may
act as reviewers of funding proposals. In some countries, it
is also important to attract the attention of funding
agencies.

In summary, thinking in terms of ecosystems for scienceorganizations and projects is useful. It is necessary toprovide topics that motivate researchers in multiple
disciplines to actively engage in the science of anorganization or a project, and this may require settingintermediate goals for peripheral disciplines so that
researchers in those disciplines do not have to passively
wait to be invited to participate. From a funding
perspective, intermediate goals for those disciplines canprovide a niche in which peripheral science species cansurvive.

In order to sell science to outsiders, the science must bepackaged in a concise, marketable form, widely advertised
to broad users, and perhaps at the same time strategicallytargeted to users with specific needs for the products being
developed. For example, long or complex documents canbe difficult for outsiders to read. This difficulty iscompounded in countries where English is not the nativelanguage. Researchers and funding managers in suchcountries, whose reading speed is much slower in English
than in their mother tongue, will be reluctant to readsuperfluous English documents. Therefore, the direction of
the science must be summarized in a short, memorableform, such as a title or short question. Once the science ispackaged in a saleable form, then the science organization

I should accept responsibility for the lack of intermediate
goals suitable for physical researchers to tackle in theFUTURE Science Plan because I served as a writing teammember of the plan. At that time, I tried to include some7Summer 2014

PICES Press Vol. 22, No. 2

North Pacific Marine Science Organization

activities in the area of physical oceanography that would
be of benefit to marine ecosystem science, but I failed toconvince the other team members. This was partly becauseof my lack of experience and my difficulty with English.
However, another factor may be that at the time of writing
the FUTURE Science Plan, ecosystem thinking was not as
common as it is today. The Science Plan was published inFebruary 2008, but IT ecosystem thinking became much
more obviously important after the launch of Apple’s App
Store in July 2008.

some regions. It may be difficult to fully include ecosystemthinking in the implementation of the ongoing FUTURE
program with respect to intermediate goals, but it may still
be possible to add some flavors, especially foradvertisements. It should be useful to have FUTURE
sessions or town hall meetings at major science meetings
such as the AGU fall meeting or the Ocean Sciences
Meeting. This would allow us to sell our science to a wider
audience. There are likely to be other, better ideas that I
have not considered to grow a rich and productive
ecosystem in which the various disciplines of PICES canthrive.

Although the halfway point has been passed in theFUTURE program, it may still be useful to discuss thescience ecosystem for FUTURE and beyond. In future
projects, it is important to establish intermediate goals forphysical disciplines by identifying topics of common
interest between physical oceanography and marine
ecosystems. For example, mesoscale eddies andsubmesoscale phenomena, which are receiving increasing
attention, are candidates for such topics, as are otherphenomena such as upwelling. Upwellings, including
those that occur in eddies and within the western boundary
currents, are a central topic of CLIVAR’s research focus“Marine biophysical interaction and dynamics of upwellingsystems.” These processes are important in determining
nutrient supply to the euphotic layer, and thus important inbiological production. Upwellings also influence coastal
hypoxia and bring corrosive, acidified water to the shelf in

Acknowledgements
I appreciate all of my PICES colleagues who I have talked
with throughout my career. In particular, the PICES
Secretariat and Dr. Hiroaki Saito, who invited me to join theFUTURE science writing team, Drs. Mike Foreman and Hal
Batchelder for constructive comments and editing, Drs. Shinichi Ito and Emanuele Di Lorenzo for helpful comments. Here,my aim was to offer criticism that is constructive not negative;
however, if this report offends anyone, I apologize in advance.
PICES is a wonderful organization and I owe a lot to it, but I
believe that PICES can become even more attractive forresearchers in all marine science disciplines and thereby
become more important in the global science arena.

Dr. Shoshiro Minobe (minobe@mail.sci.hokudai.ac.jp) is a Professor at the Graduate School of Sciences, Hokkaido University in
Sapporo, Japan. His overall interest is to understand the ocean’s role in the earth’s climate system, and he is working on decadalclimate variability over the North Pacific, ocean–atmosphere interactions, and recently, biogeochemistry data analysis. Shoshiro was amember of the Science Plan Writing Team for the PICES scientific program, FUTURE, and now co-chairs the Working Group on North
Pacific Climate Variability (WG 27).

Summer 20148