"JSPS External Review Report" was issued.(PDF File 1.22MB)

The background to the initiation of each of these programs is as follows.(a) JSPS Research Fellowships for Young ScientistsThis system was implemented as of FY1985 based on a Science Councilreport entitled “Basic Measures to Improve Japan’s Scientific ResearchSystem” (February 6, 1984). The report notes that scientific researchdevelops on the basis of researchers’ intellectual activities, and that trainingand securing researchers is of highest priority in terms of strengthening anddeveloping the foundations of scientific research. Young researchers inparticular not only comprise the core of future research, but are alsoimportant players in current research, as well as having the potential tocreate new concepts and new research developments. The report thereforefinds that designing appropriate measures for young researchers with aview to training and securing researchers is a key issue in promoting theadvance of scientific research.(b) Postdoctoral Fellowships for Research AbroadImplemented as of 1982. When the Special Committee on Japan’s ScientificResearch System, a body under the auspices of the Science Council,surveyed and deliberated on the training and securing of outstanding youngresearchers, it identified this program as effective in responding to issuessuch as the impact on maintaining and developing the future quality andresearch standards of researchers at universities, etc. This was because itachieved the important task of dispatching outstanding young researchersabroad at the point where their research abilities were most likely toflourish and the content of their research most likely to develop, and settingthem to research in an environment providing outstanding research staff,facilities and materials, as well as the opportunity for contact, exchange andcompetition with frontline foreign researchers.(c) Postdoctoral Fellowships for Foreign ResearchersRecognizing the valuable store of experience which has been built up byyoung Japanese researchers from the postwar period through to the presentday thanks to the goodwill of the United Kingdom, the United States,France and other advanced countries, this system was initially establishedin FY1979 as the “Invitation Program for Postdoctoral Researchers from UK,163