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Interview : Hope for Synthesiology−136 Synthesiology - English edition Vol.1 No.2 (2008) is involved in that conversation. The people who are involved in that conversation in Type I Basic Research are generally within a given discipline or, in some cases like biochemistry, for example, they are in two disciplines. But in the Type 2 case, I think the people who are involved in the conversation, some of them are from scientific disciplines but some of them are from the world of practice. So that’s the difference. The difference is who is involved in the conversation. (Kobayashi)We would like to consider the reviewers and readers. With Type 1 Basic Research, the readers are within the discipline and most of the readers know where the frontier of knowledge is. In case of Type 2 or in Synthesiology, the readers are in many fields, outside the field, of business etc. Also we need different kinds of reviewers. As you said conversation is important.(Lester)Also in order to judge the relevance, you need reviewers who can assess the relevance. I think that one of the challenges for the journal is that you have a very broad readership because you have multiple disciplines and you also have multiple application domains. For example, in this first issue, in one case you have health care, in one case you have environmental regulation, in one case you have personal health. So you have multiple application domains, as well as multiple disciplines. So the challenge is how to appeal to readers who might know a lot about personal health care but may know nothing about environmental regulation. And also you’ve got to bring in people from different disciplines. But that maybe is less important because your researchers are people who actually bring multiple disciplines together. The challenge is that the reader is unlikely to know more than one application domain, and so the question is going to be how is a paper in another application domain going to be for (the reader). Here is health care, and here is environment, to take two examples from the first issue. A reader who knows a lot about health care probably isn’t going to know much about the environment and will that reader be interested in articles about the environment? Maybe the thing that would make such a reader interested in an article about the environment would be if the article was really about how to do a certain kind of synthesis. Then it might appeal to readers with knowledge of other domains.(Kobayashi)This is what we would like to aim at. Now, the reviewers for this volume are all from inside AIST because people who think about Type 2 Research are very few, but we must extend it to the outer world. Next time we will invite some reviewers from the outside who know about Type 2 Basic Research. In the future, we would like the reviewing process to be done outside AIST like other academic journals.(Lester)I think one of the opportunities for this journal, perhaps, is to make it a place for people in companies who are doing Type 2 Basic Research, because there are many people in companies who do Type 2 Basic Research, especially in Japan, perhaps, but also in other countries too.(Kobayashi)The final question; even up to now, in private companies, they have many technological reports non-public or made public like in NTT, Fujitsu, Toshiba that are very useful for the engineers. But these are probably not reviewed by peers. This Synthesiology aims at the academic. What is the barrier that we must remove?(Lester)I think one of the barriers, if you’re hoping to attract authors from companies, is going to be a concern about disclosing proprietary work. Another problem or challenge is going to be to bring peer reviewers. I think some of the peer reviews have to be done by practitioners, people who understand the goal. I think that’s going to be the key. And some of those people are going to be people in AIST who have a very good understanding of the goal. But if you want to broaden this, maybe you have to bring people from the outside.(Kobayashi)Also some of the professors, for example at MIT, or Harvard, or Stanford, know how to solve the real problem and make it in the application field?(Lester)Yes, certainly at MIT the culture is one in which people are motivated to work on practical problems. So some academics will have that knowledge. (Kobayashi)So the conclusion today is that to make a good journal, especially in Type 2 Basic Research and product realization research, conversation or communication with many fields is important, even with reviewers and with readers. With academic journals, they are also based on conversation among people in many different fields.(Lester)Yes. One last point I would make: if this journal succeeds, I think it will make easier the movement of researchers into and out of universities, which I know is an important objective in Japan. If you have a journal that is academic -- a peer-reviewed journal -- but that addresses this Type 2 Basic Research, it might make it easier for researchers in industry or in AIST to move into universities, and back from universities into industry. I think the journal might help to promote migration across that boundary which, I think, is very important in Japan. (64)−

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