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Interview−131 Synthesiology - English edition Vol.1 No.2 (2008) of knowledge without any particular reference to practical objectives. So that’s one reason why publication of this kind of research is different. Another reason is that often this kind of research is carried out in companies or in other organizations where it is treated as being proprietary. The information may not actually be proprietary, but because all of the other work that goes on in that organization is proprietary, it is just assumed that this too should be proprietary, and so it doesn’t typically appear in the public domain.So there are two reasons why this kind of research is typically not published. As I understand it, the objective of this journal is to provide an opportunity to publish this kind of work, so I think it’s a very welcome addition to the field.(Kobayashi)Thank you. Have you ever seen any similar journals or papers?(Lester)I think that it’s possible to identify some publications that perhaps serve a similar purpose but they tend not, I think, to be peer-reviewed. There are a number of research organizations that have a particular practical mission, such as the Gas Research Institute or the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) in the United States. These organizations publish journals, and the contributions are directed towards a particular practical objective, but I don’t think these are quite Interview of Prof. R.K. Lester by Kobayashi on March 3rd, 2008 at MIT.(Kobayashi)Thank you for joining this discussion on Synthesiology today, at Professor Lester’s office.Today we would like to introduce our new journal named, Synthesiology, which we launched in January this year. This journal aims to publicize papers not only on analytical basic research, (we call this Type 1 Basic Research), but also on what we call Type 2 Basic Research based mainly on synthesis or integration, and also on product realization research. We are very happy to have this journal and we would like to extend this journal so that it would attract more attention in the world.My first question is, what do you think of this journal, or what is your impression of this new journal?(Lester)I think that it serves a very valuable role. My understanding of the purpose of the journal is that it addresses a type of research that is normally quite difficult to publish for a number of different reasons; one reason is that existing journals often find the motivation of achieving some practical objective not appropriate for them and this is, I think, typically true of academic journals where the objectives have to do with advancing the discipline or advancing the state - Discussion with Prof. Lester -Synthesiology Editorial BoardInterviewer; Naoto Kobayashi (Senior Executive Editor)Prof. Lester has outstanding original ideas based on plentiful and profound investigations on the role of the industry and academia in the course of innovation. He emphasizes the importance of interpretive approach where the direction of an issue will be cleared by communication, in addition to the conventional analytical approach where a solution is achieved by setting distinct problems. Here we present a discussion with Prof. Lester on the newly published Synthesiology which includes scientific papers based on Type 2 Basic Research.Hope for Synthesiology(59)−[Translation from Synthesiology, Vol.1, No.2, p.139-143 (2008)]

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