JST and DFG co-organized the 5th Funding Agency Presidents’ Meeting (FAPM) on October 6 in Kyoto. The FAPM was first held in 2010 with the aim to provide an opportunity for representatives of funding agencies (FAs) from around the world to gather to discuss common interests and concerns, thereby facilitating and enhancing networking and cooperation among them.
This year's meeting was co-chaired by DFG Vice-President Frank Allgöwer and JST President Michiharu Nakamura. Twenty-eight representatives of FAs from 21 different countries and 1 international organizations had a lively discussion on 2 topics: “Multidisciplinary initiatives and collaboration between the sciences, social sciences and humanities” and “Open access to research data”.
Regarding the “Multidisciplinary initiatives and collaboration between the sciences, social sciences and humanities”, the importance of encouraging greater cross-discipline interaction and multidisciplinary participation of young researchers were among the issues pointed out.
The discussion on the “Open access to research data” recognized the basic principles that knowledge should be the property of mankind and therefore that research that is supported by public funding should as far as possible be accessible to the public. At the same time, however, it was also agreed that many questions remain regarding how best to implement open data-sharing.
- A summary of the 5th FAPM will be made available on the following website:
http://www.jst.go.jp/inter/english/symposium/fapm.html
JST, an integrated organization of science and technology in Japan, establishes an infrastructure for the entire process from the creation of knowledge to the return to the society. For more information, visit http://www.jst.go.jp/EN/