RESEARCH CHAIRS is one of the top countries in the world in terms of funding for research, after the United States. An important part of the research chairs in Japan are donated to research centres that serve a number of universities to achieve research cooperation between them. Funding of single research chair in Japan may reach up to one billion yen (about eight million dollars). The most important companies that support research chairs are Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Fuji, Toyo and Toyota, Honda, Yazaki etc.
THE US EXPERIENCE
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GLOBAL RESEARCH CHAIR EXPERIENCES THE CANADIAN EXPERIENCE
The «research chairs» in Canada is a government programme in the area of scientific research where funds are allocated from the national budget. The programme aims at strengthening knowledge and attracts the best local and international researchers and encouraging students to engage intellectually and scientifically in their country.
FUNDS
In 2000, the Canadian government prepared an action programme for the establishment of partnership between universities, research institutions and researchers and to attract global financial support for the establishment of new research chairs equipped with the best research facilities. In the same year, the Government also allocated $900 million to create a new permanent programme to establish 2000 research professorships (Canada Research Chairs) in universities across the country by 2005 with an average of 400 research chair per year. The Canadian national strategy aims at doubling investments in support of research and development by 2010 to make Canada one of the world's top five countries in the field of research and development.
STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES
The main objective is to help Canadian universities and their affiliated research institutes and hospitals to become worldclass centres of research and training. The Chairs Programme contributes to enhance Canada's competitiveness in the global knowledgebased economy, improving Canadians' health, and enriching social and cultural life.
Other objectives of the programme include strengthening research excellence in Canada and enhancing Canada's research capacity by attracting and retaining the best researchers; improving the training of highly qualified personnel through research; improving universities' capacity to generate and apply new knowledge; promoting the best possible use of research resources through strategic institutional planning, and through collaboration among institutions and between sectors. The Canada Research Chair Programme is one of several research programmes established by the Canadian Government through its federal agencies with a total investment of $4.1 billion to promote research and innovation at the universities, hospitals and the private sector and develop a new technological environment on federal, county and municipality levels.
PROGRAMME FIELDS
Research chairs’ areas are natural sciences, engineering, health, social sciences and humanities. The focus of the programme is primarily on basic and applied research in Canadian universities.
NOMINATION
The universities nominate researchers of all nationalities in the above mentioned disciplines. There are two types of Canada Research Chairs. Tier 1 Chairs, tenable for seven years and renewable, are for outstanding researchers acknowledged by their peers as world leaders in their fields. For each Tier 1 Chair, the university receives $200,000 annually for seven years. Tier 2 Chairs, tenable for five years and renewable once, are for exceptional emerging researchers, acknowledged
by their peers as having the potential to lead in their field. For each Tier 2 Chair, the university receives $100,000 annually for five years. The number of nominations for a university is related to the level of funding recently obtained by university researchers from federal agencies (NSERC, CIHR, and SSHRC). Also some chairs are assigned to small academic institutions receiving less than 1% support from these agencies. The chair holders receive logistic support from Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI). The total support in 2005 amounted to $250 million from CFI and $625 million from the total funding sources.
SELECTION CRITERIA
Careful consideration of nominations from various universities is exercised to select researchers who will be elected to obtain a research chair in one of the two abovementioned tiers. There will be three reviewers for each Research Chair nomination. The assessment is conducted through programme reviewers who are selected from the best researchers in the world in the field of the research chair from inside and outside Canada. The programme reviewers’ committee contributes to the establishment of the 2000 research chairs through the selection of researchers and evaluation of the appropriate funding for each chair and providing recommendations to the programme Steering Committee. The universities that nominate researchers can nominate international experts to assess the nomination as a supportive effort in the reviewing process. The current chair holders can also participate in the reviewing process for the next chairs.
INTERDISCIPLINARY ADJUDICATION COMMITTEE
The program Steering Committee which manages the Canadian Research Chairs Programme consists of the President of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC); the President of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR); the President of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC); and the President of Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and Superintendent of the Canadian Ministry of Industry. The Canadian experience is unique in terms of state supervision of the programme and allocation of substantial funding from the budget of the country and long-term plans and specific objectives that the country attained both in terms of scientific and economic aspects. The Canadian experience is consistent with other experiences in terms of assigning research chairs to researchers who have achieved international recognition in their fields.
THE JAPANESE EXPERIENCE
The research chairs programme in Japan was adopted in 1987. The university or research centres who have obtained the research chair from funding institutions and donors assumes the regulatory supervision of the programme in terms of selecting, monitoring and evaluation of researchers. The Japanese universities do not establish strategic research programmes consistent with the research chairs’ theme as the case in Canada, but the research chair holder seeks to achieve the objectives of the incubating institution. Nevertheless, the research chairs programme in Japan are successfully growing. Japan
The American experience is characterized by the diversity of funding sources where financial support to Research Chairs comes from economic institutions, some countries like Japan and even from the budgets of the universities themselves to support scientific research and improve the performance and ranking. American universities themselves are funding institutions with educational and social dimensions. The financing of a Research Chair ranges between one million and five million Dollars, and reaches up to 50 million dollars in special cases. In addition, endowed Research Chairs (i.e., not limited to specific time duration) are created, especially if the Research
Chair was established for the commemoration of a late scientist or a businessman. It is worth mentioning that the American government has no affiliation with Research Chairs programs not only in terms of planning and supervision but also in terms of funding.
THE EUROPEAN EXPERIENCE European experience is the earliest in this field. The German experience is over 40 years old against the sixteen years of the Japanese experience. It is not much different from the US experience, both in terms of Research Chairs’ management and funding. The sources of funding are dependent on relationships between donors and the
university or research centres without interference from the state. This applies to countries such as UK and Germany as well. However, France has changed its policy since 1991, where the French government has launched a research centre (The French University Institute, “Institut Universitaire de France”) which assigns 40 research chairs annually in the areas of basic sciences such as mathematics, physics, computer science and medicine. This governmental program is complementary to the old programme, which is based on applied research for funding institutions much like the American way. Thus the French experience became a combination of both the American and the Canadian experiences. The French university Institute focuses during the process of selecting its members (research chair holders) and researchers in universities located outside the capital Paris in order to achieve regional balance in research creativity. Membership is classified into two tiers as in the Canadian program. The first tier includes renowned researchers, who have a long research experience, and tenable for five years, renewable once. Only fifteen researchers were selected annually in this
category versus twenty-five for tier 2, where the latter consists of distinguished researchers aged forty years or below to develop future generations of quality researchers. The members of this tier receive a non renewable five year Research Chair. The institute currently comprise a total of 273 members (152 tier 1 and 121 tier 2). Since the establishment of the Institute in 1991, 467 members were recruited. It should be noted that in all the experiences that were reviewed, a portion of the budget is often used for education, lectures, training and the design of teaching materials relevant to the research chair theme. Higher Education | Issue 2
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