======================================== Questions not addressed during the class ======================================== ## Some of the questions below may not be exactly what you asked, for I summarized similar questions. ## Some questions may be skipped. This happens (1) when answering the question needed some clarification or contexts behind the question, (2) when a similar question was asked in the class, or (3) when the presentation essentially answered the question. ## If you find your questions unanswered or if you have follow-up questions, please let me know. Q1: Are the quality of the papers and the international coauthorship associated in any way? A1: It is a statistical fact that internationally coauthored papers receive more citations (, which is a measure of impact). Even after we control for some factors that are correlated with quality (i.e., removing the effects of confounding factors), the correlation remains to some extent. This differs by country. For example, in the US, after other factors are controlled, the direct effect of international coauthorship disappears, possibly because domestic teams are already internationalized in the US. Q2: Suppose the response rate of the survey was much higher, would the result change? A2: Response bias was checked for some key factors, and no significant bias was found except that researchers in clinical medicine were less likely to respond. Q3: Instead of publication, if we use other indicators such as patents, do you expect to find similar results? A3: No. The result will differ depending on the indicators. For example, it is known that international coauthorship is less common for patents. Q4: Is the difference between US and Japan in the percentage of foreign-born first authors simply a result of smaller number of foreign students in Japanese universities? A4: I think so. Q5: To what extent does researcherfs scientific performance impact on his or her degree of collaboration with foreign colleagues? A5: It is plausible that excellent researchers are more likely to attract collaborators, though I donft have statistical evidence for that. Talking about the causality direction between performance and collaboration, it is difficult to distinguish which is dominant. Q6: Is it possible to improve domestic education system (undergrad/postgrad) with the help of excellent foreign scholars? A6: As far as I know, no strong evidence about the impact of research on education exists. As a matter of fact, Japanese government encourages outreach activities for its grantees (researchers), which can include educational activities. Q7: Did you consider the impact of University Research Administrators in your comparison? A7: No. Q8: How will the S&T Policy and labor market be influenced by the foreign scholars? A8: In the case of Japan, the number of foreign scholar is too small to impact on labor market or whatever. If we have more foreigners, there should be some effects, though. The currently, we are trying to attract more foreigners. Q9: Is there any advantages with a research team without any foreign-born researches? A9: For example, communication cost should be smaller for domestic teams. For example, in some fields where contribution to local community matters, international team may not make much sense. Long-term (like 10 years) research needs long-term commitment; in such a case, from a managerial perspective, domestic team may appear secure. Q10: It seems to me that in Europe, there tend to be more elder scientists than young ones in fields with a strong hierarchy. How about in Japan? A10: In Japan as a whole, senior scientist population is increasing (though this is the same in any other industry in Japan). In the US, too, PIs are getting older. On the one hand, PIs are getting older; on the other hand, there are increasing number of young scholars who work as a labor under the PIs. Q11: Why does the proportion of younger scholars who made most contribution to focal papers in US always exceed that of Japan? A11: The number of authors in Japanese teams is greater than that in American teams. In addition, the composition of research teams is slightly different; in Japan, associate/assistant professor and full professor tend to be in one team (so-called Koza-system), while in the US, one team has only one professor. These factors may explain the observation. Q12: In both US and Japan's case, especially in life sciences, the composition of postdoctoral fellows and students varies tremendously based on the types of papers (Highly Cited Papers vs. Normal Papers). Why? A12: In life sciences, it may take longer time to acquire knowledge and skills enough to produce excellent papers. In other fields, such as chemistry, the learning period may be shorter. In addition, it may take longer period in life sciences to collect series of data necessary to write one paper than in chemistry. These may explain why postdoc becomes a more important player in life sciences than students. Q13: Facing the problem of brain drain to the US, what kind of policies should be taken? A13: An important thing is to facilitate both inflows and outflows of talents. As for the shortage of inflows, Japanese government has been making efforts, such as Global 30. I think that the weakness of Japanese universities (or professor in there), in terms of the power of attracting inflow, is their low visibility to global community. To address this issue, the government has made some investment, such as WPI. Q14: For the analysis of internationalization, do you think it is better to use the first authors' country of residence before 18? A14: It should be interesting to know that. In the case of Japanese sample, it wonft probably change the result dramatically. In the US, it will. In the survey, though, it is practically difficult to ask for the country of residence for other members in the research team. Q15: How can you explain the fact that 70% of the first authors of highly cited papers in the US are foreign-born? A15: Probably, the biggest factor is that the proportion of foreigners is very high in the US science community in the first place.