3. Conclusion

1999-01-25

This survey was conducted among academic societies and research institutes, which have served to support the distribution of information in the field of scientific technologies, in order to identify how the Internet has been involved in the distribution of information in this area amid the rapid spread of the Internet. Previously, no survey in the scientific research field like this one had been conducted. With this survey, valuable data have been obtained and the use of the Internet in the field of scientific research has been identified.

3.1 Status of Use of the Internet at Academic Societies and Problems

Of all academic societies surveyed, only 40% use the Internet (see Figure 2-1). This is probably because information infrastructures necessary for using the Internet, such as computers and LANs, have not been adequately deployed at academic societies overall. Of those societies using the Internet, more than 80% have Web pages (see Figure 2-7), indicating that they actively provide information through the Internet.
As indicated in the survey results, E-mail is not used as frequently as mail, telephone and fax, and mail is commonly used in communication with members (see Figure 2-3). Even among the societies using the Internet, those having identified members' E-mail addresses represent less than 60% (see Figure 2-5). Since many societies have not identified the E-mail addresses of all their members, they pointed out that they cannot collectively handle E-mails (see Figure 2-6). If an academic society has members without E-mail addresses or some whose addresses are not identified, it cannot discontinue the use of fax or mail. Even if the society chooses E-mail as a means of communication, its clerical work will conversely increase. As a result, E-mails are currently not used frequently as a means of communication with members.

Then, do society members not have E-mail addresses? Researchers are often members of academic societies as well. Since the survey of research institutes indicates that most researchers have E-mail addresses, it is unreasonable to think that the ratio of those academic society members without E-mail addresses is small. Therefore, the extent to which members' E-mail addresses are identified will affect the diffusion of E-mail at academic societies. Additionally, if the effect of using E-mail in contacts with members is clearly recognized, it will encourage academic societies to earnestly administer E-mail addresses of their members. For example, they are expected to distribute their newsletters via E-mail.

There are many academic societies that complain of the lack of human resources available for Web page maintenance and know-how for utilizing the Internet (see Figures 2-9 and 2-12). As the Internet has become widespread, various services have become available, including Web page production. These services likely include a number of services that meet the needs of society secretariats. We would like to propose that academic societies actively outsource the handling of their Web page maintenance. We also expect service providers to introduce standard system packages and cases of system building that will support the use of the Internet at academic societies.

Responding to our question about the advantages of opening a Web page, many societies indicated the inability to confirm the effect of the opening (see A.1.6.2). Even for those societies not using the Internet, how to evaluate the effect of using the Internet will be a matter of great concern. Unlike research institutes, which are usually equipped with equipment necessary for connecting to the Internet, many academic societies need additional human resources and facility investment for using the Internet. Accordingly, it will be necessary to evaluate specific effects before starting to use the Internet. At present, a quantitative evaluation method has not been firmly established for the effect of using the Internet, or information on the effect has not been fully provided either. Therefore, for those societies not using the Internet, information on those already using it will be useful.

For example, records of access to the Internet are one of the few items that can serve as a quantitative evaluation index, but have not been fully utilized (see A.1.6.3). Recently, free or commercial software for using access log data has become available, and some service providers offer detailed access logs analyzing services for users' Web pages. It is expected that those academic societies having Web pages will be broadly aware of and utilize these software products and services. Also, we expect analyzed data to be made open to the public so that those societies without Web pages can utilize them as reference.

3.2 Status of Use of the Internet at Research Institutes and Problems

Almost 100% of research institutes have installed computers that are connected to LANs and the Internet. Thus, their information infrastructures are substantial (see Figure 2-2). However, researchers are not fully satisfied with their environments and many of them desire faster communication (see Figure 2-12). Concerning the means of communication between members of the joint research project, it was learned that E-mail has become the major means of communication by far exceeding other means (see Figure 2-4). Given that more than 60% of research institutes have used the Internet for more than 3 years, E-mail seems to be commonly used as a means of communication.

The high percentage of E-mail diffusion appears to be connected also with researchers' behavioral patterns. When trying to contact a joint researcher who is mobile in terms of time and place, it is frequently impossible to identify his/her location, and therefore telephone calls may not reach him/her easily. It is presumed that E-mail and fax are more commonly used as a means to bridge this time and location gap. At first glance, research institutes are more fully utilizing the Internet, taking into account the fact that they have longer experience in using the Internet and almost 100% of them use E-mail. However, those having Web pages represent only 54%, and as a whole, they are not very active in terms of providing information as compared with the high percentage of their E-mail usage (see Figure 2-8). Regarding Web page maintenance, "there are few or no suitable human resources" is the largest problem as with academic societies (see Figure 2-9).

Concerning the provision of basic information by research institutes to the Internet, such as the existence of research projects or contents of research, it was a little unexpected that approx. 73% of research institutes did not make such information available to the public (see A.2.6.3). By using the Internet, it will be easy to communicate the joy of their research activities to the general public and children who are interested in universities' research activities. We expect those research institutes that are not very active in provision of information to distribute basic information of research institutes to the general public through using the Internet.

In addition to their basic information, what can be provided by research institutes will include theses presented at study meetings and achievements of their research efforts. In the questionnaire, we asked them for their opinions about presentation of theses on the Internet. Those replying "want to show the whole text" represented only approx. 10%, and those wanting to limit the presented contents to titles/authors and abstracts accounted for approx. 70% (see A.2.6.3). Possible reasons for not wanting to or being unable to make public their achievements include: copyrights of theses are managed by academic societies; information on Web pages can easily be quoted or modified and the copyrights may not be protected; and presentations on the Internet are not easily recognized as research achievements. However, it was unable to identify them in our survey. This has been left as a theme for a future survey.

Concerning the obtaining of information and interchanges between researchers by using the Internet, the results of the questionnaire show that informational exchange is tending to increase in frequency and quantity, obtaining of scientific information is becoming easier, and joint research activities are increasing. Thus, actual achievements have been made through the use of the Internet (A.2.6.1). Also, researchers feel that study areas themselves receive substantial effects of the Internet (see Figure 2-11). For example, there are now areas of study where the Internet is a prerequisite for research activities, such as genomic information processing.

It can be said that among researchers, the Internet has already become not only a means of communication, but also an essential medium for research activities (see Figure 2-10).

3.3 What are Expected of Internet-related Technologies and Internet Users

As shown in the questionnaire of academic societies, the key to the spread of E-mail is how users will manage each other's mail addresses. Printing E-mail addresses on business cards has already become commonplace. If E-mail addresses are exchanged more extensively like basic information such as names, postal addresses and telephone numbers, E-mails will become even more widespread. We expect users to take more opportunities to utilize E-mail in everyday communication. In technological terms, E-mail addresses can be handled as, for example, a database of members by combining E-mail addresses with telephone numbers, fax numbers and postal addresses in order to support maintenance of E-mails at an organization. Thus, it is expected that a system will become available that is capable of sending and printing E-mails, faxes and postal mails centrally and easily. Requests made of E-mail in the questionnaire were for communication of non-text information, security of confidentiality and solution to corruption of text (see A.1.5.5, A.2.6.2). Due to recent diversification of mailing software functions, solutions to these problems are becoming available, including attaching non-text documents with a simple operation and sending/receiving encrypted personal and confidential mails. We expect that smoother exchange of E-mails through further improvements of E-mail software products will be realized.

Obstacles in opening Web pages can be divided into technological inadequacy and lack of human resources. Recently, software products that enable users to easily produce Web pages have become available. Thus, technological hurdles are gradually lowering. Yet, there are still many academic societies and research institutes that consider maintaining Web pages to be too time consuming (see Figure 2-9). This is probably due to the fact that there is little compatibility between forms of information that users handle on a daily basis and the HTML format to describe Web pages. If forms that are more compatible with HTML become available as a type of information management by users (for example, by electronically saving documents in the SGML format), this hurdle will be drastically lowered.

The other obstacle, lack of human resources, may be deeply related to organizational structures and existence of consensus. For this problem, exchanging information with academic societies or research institutes that are successfully operating their Web pages, conducting case studies, and educating staff within organizations will be effective. We expect that successful cases at preceding academic societies and research institutes will be broadly announced so that such consensus will be promoted.

In order to stimulate informational exchange on the Internet, it is necessary for the holder of information to transmit it to the Internet first. In the meantime, it is also necessary for those users desiring the information to be able to reach it. Currently, directory services (link collections) are serving this role. However, since research-related information is highly specialized, it is difficult to provide satisfactory navigation with ordinary services. For this reason, it is also advisable that efforts be made to provide services that meet the above specialized requirements, such as index services for Web pages of academic societies and research institutes and related information sources.

3.4 Subjects of Future Research and Study

The result of this survey revealed that most basic information and achievements related to research projects are not made public on the Internet. By contrast, in the US, achievements of research projects that receive public funds are basically made public, and recently, they are generally presented on the Internet. What makes the two countries so different? Possible reasons include differences in methods for evaluating research efforts, differences in scientific research promotion policies, and differences in national traits. Comparative research on an international level regarding the availability of research achievements on the Internet will substantially help identify the relationship between scientific research and the Internet.

It has also been learned that there are considerable gaps between the Japanese language and non-Japanese languages such as English. We asked the respondents about description languages of Web pages. Of the academic societies and research institutes that have Web pages, those societies having Web pages in English account for 44.6% (see A.1.6.3) and research institutes 58.1% (see A.2.5.3). There was a 2-to-1 ratio of the volume of information provided in Japanese and English. Given that English-based Web pages are generally less enriched than Japanese-written pages, the actual gap should be greater. Since most information provided on Web pages and most society bulletins are available only in Japanese, most information provided by research communities in Japan is presumed to be for domestic distribution. Is this because of the Japanese sense of weakness in English? Or, might there be other factors? Or, it this a common phenomenon shared by non-English speaking countries including Japan? In order to elucidate these questions, it will be necessary to conduct research on the status of provision of information in non-English languages and the status of Internet usage in non-English countries including Japan in the future.

In addition, it will also be necessary to conduct research and study from an information recipient's point of view in order to identify the status of distribution of scientific research related information. Possible themes for future research will include: how much demand foreign countries have for Japanese scientific research; how such information is distributed; and what effects the Internet has brought about.

A new question arose concerning the selection of means of communication in this survey. Through this survey, we were able to compare means of communication at academic societies and research institutes in terms of frequency. However, it is still not known which of telephone, fax, postal mail and E-mail is chosen in what situation, why each means is used, etc. It will be necessary to observe in detail the relationship between the user's need for contact and the selected means of communication in order to study new applications for the Internet.

Various surveys have been conducted on the Internet in many areas. Since it has not been long since the Internet was introduced, there seem to have been only a few ongoing research efforts with specific themes. Through this survey, we found it necessary to conduct a more extensive, detailed survey in order to grasp the environment of Internet usage more accurately.

Continuity is also an important factor in research on the Internet. A one-time survey will enable us to grasp the status at that time. However, it will not identify the effect exerted on each field later. In order to grasp such effects, a time-series, fixed point observation is needed. Thus, continuous research is essential also to grasp the tendency of the Internet that is changing rapidly.

3.5 JPNIC's Role

Currently, information about the Internet is being provided through various types of media. Following the so-called "Internet boom" immediately after it was commercialized, understanding of the Internet appears to be steadily deepening among both users and non-users. In this survey, we asked those academic societies not using the Internet about their intention to use it. Of their responses, those desiring to use it accounted for 60% (see A.1.5.7), indicating that there are many non-users who are enthusiastic about the use in the future. However, as indicated in the results of the survey of academic societies, they may face a situation where even those interested in the Internet cannot use it, or users' needs are not fully satisfied. It is essential to have knowledge of Internet usage, such as what can be done with the Internet and what technologies and products are suitable for what kinds of need, so that the users will achieve satisfaction. JPNIC intends to keep its efforts in order to help make the Internet environment more comfortable through educational activities for Internet users.

JPNIC plans to continue various surveys on the Internet. We welcome your requests and inquiries about our research.