NAITO, Takumi
Director of Waseda Institute of political Economy (WINPEC)
Doing research is fun, isn’t it? Research is the creation of new knowledge, and the joy of finding something new is irreplaceable. People who are fascinated by such joy gather at universities and research institutions.
Research is not completed simply by producing new knowledge. Research is valuable only when it is recognized by many other researchers as truly new and useful. In the modern world, such procedures are carried out by academic journals with rigorous peer review processes and books published by reputable publishers. The motto “Publish or Perish” suggests that if you cannot publish your research in such media, you are as good as dead as a researcher.
As I have just been appointed as the Director of WINPEC, my personal guiding principle is to “support researchers who publish their research outputs in highly respected media in their respective fields of expertise,” and I will manage the Institute based on this guiding principle. This is in line with the purpose of the Institute, in particular “to contribute to the development of these fields (Translator’s note: these fields refer to political science, economics, and mass communication studies)” (Article 2 of the Rules of WINPEC, Waseda University).
Currently, WINPEC’s research support system includes WINPEC Research Projects, WINPEC Seminars, WINPEC Workshops, WINPEC Working Papers, and so on. I hope that all researchers at WINPEC work hard to refine their research in research groups, seminars, and workshops, disseminate the first draft of their research outputs as working papers, go through the rigorous peer review and editing processes (even if they are often rejected), and commit to finally publishing them as top journal articles or books.
Let’s just do research and publish!
September 21, 2022