Perceptions of Research Excellence in Thailand and Japan

This paper explores how research excellence is perceived among researchers in Thailand and Japan with an aim to explore whether there are any new indicators that could later be proposed and adopted as criteria of excellence. Based on a questionnaire survey, the findings reflect ideas and viewpoints that could be found among researchers in both countries. Creative researchers are crucial to a strong national research and innovation system. Institutions should provide an environment or incentives based on research performance for their researchers to flourish and be productive. For decades, bibliometrics have been used to evaluate individual research performance for its easy approach and faster speed than a qualitative assessment would warrant. Nonetheless, there have been a number of studies on research performance evaluating systems that point out how a purely bibliometric approach is inadequate in summarizing the quality of the scientific performance. The pressures on researchers today influence their thinking and oppose their creativity. To investigate the perception of research excellence, three key research questions were set in this study: what counts as excellence, how to measure excellence, and how to support excellence. The findings confirm that traditional granting criteria that frames an idea of excellence remain valid, but they also suggest novel criteria be considered and prioritized. This paper argues that the existing evaluating system is insufficient for unleashing the curiosity and creativity of researchers and fostering excellence. In the final section, the paper discusses factors that contribute to scientific creativity that we should not overlook.