Scientists prefer research answering humanity's intellectual curiosity: questionnaire results from Members of the Japan Geoscience Union

Abstract

The research community needs to respect its members' diversity and discuss how to respond to society's mandate and engage in dialogue with society. To obtain data for discussion and dialogue, we asked members of the Japan Geoscience Union how they perceive the ideals and status of research with a questionnaire. We obtained 292 valid responses shortly before the JpGU-AGU Joint Meeting 2020. Our results showed that the members did not think that the research activities “giving back to society” contributed to the “creation of knowledge” compared to the research activities based on intellectual curiosity. A similar amount of positive, negative, and neutral responses was obtained for the current situation in which the number of citations and journal impact factors are used without any discussion of the ideals of researchers.