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Round-table talk : Synthesiology on the Second Anniversary−97−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.3 No.1 (2010) we started to discuss Full Research. I enjoy working as an editor as I see the style gradually become established.(Ono)I would like to share with you now two of my recent experiences. I gave a lecture “Synthesiological research and innovation” in Taipei, Taiwan last September. After that I dropped by at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Hsinchu, and was asked on short notice to give a lecture under the same title to an audience of about 100 researchers including the director of ITRI. I talked about “Full Research and Synthesiology to express it”. Interest was high and many questions were asked. To the question, “How is it in the United States?” I answered: “I think America is a country of pragmatism, and therefore something like Full Research is done in actuality. The mental barrier between academia and industry is low in the States, as seen from the fact that the university professors often set up venture businesses. Yet they do not consider the industry-academia collaborations or the venture activities as research itself. While research and business are conducted without border, those are distinctly research and business. The Americans do not publish a journal like Synthesiology, and do not think in terms of accumulating such knowledge. I may be going too far, but I don’t think the Americans see the necessity of thinking how business is related to research, as long as the business is successful.” Another question asked was, “What was your motivation for starting Synthesiology?” I answered: “I think I have virtually practiced the equivalence to Full Research and Type 2 Basic Research ever since I started working at the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology so long ago. I started the journal to redefine these researches, to appropriately respect the activities of the Type 2 Basic Research and Product Realization Research, and to put the people who engage in these researches into the spotlight.” I think those are my sincere feelings. Since the people of ITRI have the same objectives as AIST, they seemed to share my feelings and therefore, to thoroughly sympathize with my lecture.The second story I’d like to share is that I had an opportunity to speak with the chief editor of a famous academic journal of the American Chemical Society, when he was visiting Japan. I brought up Synthesiology and said, “I’m working on this journal.” He was astonished by the disclosure of the reviewers’ names. In fact, before I brought up Synthesiology, I asked, “Where do you put in the most effort to make a good journal?” The editor answered: “I take extreme care on reviewing. The reviewers are anonymous, and I try to make the authors anonymous to the reviewers, too. Also, I am trying to refine the review system by allowing the authors to appoint or reject the reviewers in an appropriate manner.” When I said, “In Synthesiology the reviewers are revealed and the discussions are disclosed”, he was so surprised he fell silent for a moment and then said, “That’s really impressive.”Language in which science and society speak with each other(Yoshikawa)I’d been thinking ever since I was young how “synthesis” could become a discipline, and I feel that my grand dream has been realized here. There is the background where Full Research is practiced thoroughly at AIST, and certainly, Synthesiology is the crystallization of the efforts of many AIST researchers who work to make “synthesis” into a systematic discipline. I am hopeful for the future. Moreover, the editors and reviewers are extremely passionate, and there’s a feeling that AIST is really a great place to be. That’s my first impression.More specifically, there is a development of a language with which the researchers can speak to people who are not specialists of the same discipline. The Science and Technology in Society (STS) Forum is a gathering of scientists, politicians, and businessmen, but its greatest difficulty is the lack of a common language. When a specialist talks about some specialized subject, the politician gets angry saying, “I don’t understand a thing.” What I claimed was: “The specialists speak in a language necessary for their research, which is jargon. When speaking to people outside their own disciplines, the researchers can explain what they are doing only in terms of what benefit will be brought by the results of their research. That is extremely difficult, because at times it will be a projection, and at times it may be vague. However, the researchers must spend effort to reduce the vagueness and raise the accuracy of the projection.” The fact that a reader can read Synthesiology papers and understand other fields is a proof that a very valuable methodology in terms of “verbal communication” is developing. That means a language of communication between science and society is being created. To this I shall give full marks.Next, I won’t say there is something that only gets a zero mark, but I shall point something out. The papers are all fun and I feel the “passion”. The verbal quality is communicated through the passion, so I understand what the authors wish to accomplish. While “passion” is necessary, the Dr. Hiroyuki Yoshikawa

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