Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Japan Research Mobility Programs: Evaluating the Disturbance from Malaysians’
Perspective
Hong-Seng Gan1,2*
1 Department of Data Science, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, 16100 UMK City Campus, Pengkalan Chepa, Kelantan, Malaysia
2 Malaysia Alumni of Sakura Science Association, Jln Sultan Yahya Petra, Kampung Datuk Keramat, 54100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author: [email protected] Accepted: 15 December 2021 | Published: 31 December 2021
DOI:https://doi.org/10.55057/ijares.2021.3.4.9
_________________________________________________________________________________________
Abstract: Research mobility contributes to quality education by fostering intellectual knowledge sharing and mutual cultural understanding. In Malaysia, large number of researchers and students have actively joined Japan mobility programs every year. During the mobility, both Japanese and Malaysian researchers would discuss research plans and outputs.
However, COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the existing research mobility model. Due to safety concern, international travel was prohibited and outbound mobility was postponed or shifted to online platform. In this study, a survey was conducted to investigate the disturbance on research mobility caused by COVID-19. Questionnaires were distributed among Malaysian researchers and students to evaluate the impact in terms of intellectual knowledge transfer, networking and communication as well as research productivity. The findings showed that the pandemic has significant disturbance on networking and communication (p = 0.000).
Intuitively, we have deduced the disturbance is caused by the hindrance to strong bond building with Japanese researchers after the COVID-19 outbreak. Hence, future studies should explore the strategies to overcome the obstacles of networking and communication in post COVID-19 era.
Keywords: Japan research mobility, COVID-19 pandemic, scientific collaboration, Malaysian researchers and students, Disturbance
___________________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
Research mobility fosters international scientific collaboration and thus, encourages vibrant knowledge transfer and mutual cultural understanding among researchers around the globe (Jacob & Meek, 2013). There are various mobility initiatives being offered by well-known funding agencies such as the Erasmus programs by European Union (EU), fellowships and grants programs by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Fulbright Scholar program by the US Department of State, postdoctoral and invitational fellowships by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and Sakura Science Exchange program by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST).
For instance, active bilateral collaborative research activities supported by mobility programs have accrued significant benefits to the nation, university and researchers. These benefits include access to technical expertise, collaboration on societal challenges, research resources sharing and greater international grant opportunities (Wagner, Whetsell, Baas, & Jonkers, 2018). The engagement enables the widening of methodological development, analysis and interpretation approaches. Furthermore, mobility program enables researchers from different cultural perspectives to work together with their hosts. As a result, the global connectedness impact of modern mobility program has substantial social, cultural and technological impacts with benefits leaping beyond pure academia purpose.
Due to the outbreak of COVID-19, existing way of conduct of mobility program has hit a snag.
International travel has been prohibited by most nations in order to minimize the risk of spread of COVID-19 and its variants. Since, most universities have shifted to online platforms such as Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and/or Cisco Webex to conduct their lectures, workshops, webinars and meetings. Physical activities including mobility program have been curtailed to minimal level. Subsequently, conventional mobility program has transformed into a new landscape in post COVID-19 era where an unknown degree of disruption to the collaborative initiatives has been incurred.
Attributed to the successful implementation of Look East policy, Japan mobility programs are popular among Malaysian researchers and students. Every year, a large number of researchers and students would visit their Japanese host collaborators via mobility programs offered by JSPS and JST. These programs, which ranged from a week to several years, are critical to long term talent cultivation and scientific productivity development. Bilateral expertise exchange between both teams has enhanced the research competitiveness and quality at international level (Hiroyuki, 2013). Besides, the overseas experience would widen the horizons of Malaysian researchers and students.
Despite the importance of Japan mobility programs to long term scientific development in Malaysia, no study has been conducted to evaluate the disturbance of scientific contributions from Japan mobility programs caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the scientific contributions can be categorized into research knowledge and skills sharing, research networking and communication, as well as research productivity. This study aims to measure the level of disturbance to scientific contributions faced by Malaysian researchers and students who had participated in Japan mobility programs before. According to our best knowledge, this is the first ever study focuses on the effect of COVID-19 on mobility program from Malaysian perspective.
2. Literature Review
Retrospectively, the effect of value, impact and benefits of international research mobility has always been an interesting question to address. Given the large amount of financial support being invested into global mobility programs, several studies have published their findings on the effect of research mobility on international research collaboration. The main scope of previous studies largely concentrated on the benefit of research mobility to researchers in terms of career progression and social implication. Besides, these studies, such as Royal Society (United Kingdoms, UK) and Mobility and Career Paths of Researchers in Europe (MORE) (European Commission), focused on researchers in western countries.
In 2013, MORE2 survey (European Commission, 2013) was carried out among 11,000 researchers from 27 European Union (EU) countries, with the focus on investigating the usefulness of research mobility to careers, working conditions and mobility pattern. The survey used questionnaires as the medium of conduct. Qualification of researcher, career stage of researcher, opportunity for advancement were some of the key indicators of this study. Key findings from the survey showed that international mobility in post-PhD career stage would have positive effects on research output effects (quality of publication, citation impact, patent) and research skills advancement.
In 2015, a study (Boring, Flanagan, Gagliardi, Kaloudis, & Karakasidou, 2015) was carried out to investigate the mobility experience of researchers and identify factors which influence propensity to mobility. Experience of mobility by sector, gender, age group, career impacts and family status were key indicators of this study. The study has reported an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards past and prospective international mobility. In 2017, The Royal Society has conducted a review on surveys of international mobility of researchers, with a particular focus on the UK. The review highlighted that research mobility led to better international networks, more research outputs and better career outcomes (Guthrie, Lichten, Corbett, & Wooding, 2017).
Nonetheless, abovementioned studies, which concentrated on western mobility programs, were conducted in pre COVID-19 era. Even though the findings have concluded the benefits of mobility programs, the disturbance brought by the COVID-19 pandemic on existing mobility programs remained to be studied. Besides, there is literally no quantitative survey being conducted on Malaysian researchers and students attended Asian exchange programs. The lack of these insights limit our latest understanding about the changes endured by these exchange programs and the redefinition of future exchange programme conduct.
3. Methodology
3.1 Conduct of Survey
The study has conducted a survey on Malaysian researchers and students who had visited Japanese universities/institutes via Japan mobility programs from 2015 until early 2020. These mobility programs include Sakura Science Exchange program, JSPS fellowship programs and Japan Student Service Organization (JASSO) exchange program. Questionnaires were distributed to the respondents with the voluntarily help of JST and Malaysia Alumni of Sakura Science Association (MASSA). Consultation was provided when necessary. The returned questionnaires were examined and a total of 93 completed questionnaires were collected. All respondents had given their consents to this study.
3.2 Structure of Questionnaire
At the beginning of survey, respondents were required to provide several important details include education degree of respondent, field of study, Japanese host university/institute and the frequency of visit. The structure of questionnaire comprises of 27 questions within 4 sections as follows: (1) Experience of Japan mobility program, (2) Pre COVID-19 research progress after mobility program, (3) Disturbance to research progress after COVID-19 outbreak and (4) Conclusion. Each question has a Likert scale ranged from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Higher scores indicate stronger effect/ more positive experience.
Section 1 – Experience of Japan mobility program: The mobility program fosters the intellectual transfer among researchers. This section, which consisted of 6 questions, would
investigate the impression before and after the mobility program experienced by Malaysian researchers and students. Given the active collaboration between Japanese and Malaysian researchers, we hypothesized Malaysian respondents would respond positively to the experience.
Section 2 – Pre COVID-19 research progress after mobility program: The mobility program would strengthen the international collaboration from long term perspective. This section aimed to investigate the continuation of research collaboration between Japanese and Malaysian researchers after the mobility program. There were 9 questions in this section. We hypothesized that Malaysian respondents would respond positively to the research progress after mobility program.
Section 3 – Disturbance to research progress after COVID-19 outbreak: The pandemic has disrupted the conventional way of lifestyle around the world. The disturbance to mobility program in terms of knowledge and skills transfer, research networking and communication and scientific productivity has not been investigated. There were 9 questions in this section.
We hypothesized the disturbance would be significant in the maintaining effective networking and communication.
Section 4 – Conclusion: This section aims to summarize the overseas and research experience of Malaysian respondents. There were 3 questions in this section.
4. Result and Discussion
4.1 Analysis Approach of Survey Data
In this survey, we studied the effects of the following components i.e. overseas experience (Section1, 6 questions), knowledge and skills transfer (Section 2 and 3, 6 questions), research networking and communication (Section 2 and 3, 6 questions) as well as scientific productivity (Section 2 and 3, 6 questions). The findings were analysed statistically by using SPSS software (IBM, Armonk, NY, US).
Correlation test was computed to confirm the validity and reliability of survey questions (𝑝 <
0.01) before further statistical analysis was performed. Then, we conducted descriptive analysis to study the statistical behaviour of survey data and multivariate test to examine the associations of components in this study. Lastly, we computed univariate pairwise comparison to confirm the effect significance of disturbance (𝑝 < 0.05).
4.2 Discussion on Result Findings
Table 1 shows the results of descriptive results of survey. The Mobility_Before is denoted as the research impression about the Japan mobility program before the respondents visited their Japanese hosts, Mobility_After is denoted as the research impression after the respondents returned from the mobility program, Knowledge_Pre is denoted as the continuation of scientific knowledge and skills sharing before COVID-19 outbreak, Knowledge_Post is denoted as the disturbance to the progress of scientific knowledge and skills sharing after COVID-19 outbreak, Networking_Pre is denoted as the continuation of networking and communication before COVID-19 outbreak, Networking_Post is denoted as the disturbance to the maintenance of networking and communication after COVID-19 outbreak, Productivity_Pre is denoted as the continuation of scientific productivity before COVID-19 outbreak, Productivity_Post is denoted as the disturbance to scientific productivity after COVID-19 outbreak.
Table 1: Mean Likert scores for research mobility components
Components Mean±SD N
Mobility_Before 4.032±0.585 93
Mobility_After 4.394±0.551 93
Knowledge_Pre 3.974±0.719 93
Knowledge_Post 4.050±0.730 93
Networking_Pre 3.831±0.810 93
Networking_Post 3.831±0.810 93
Productivity_Pre 3.498±1.016 93
Productivity_Post 3.731±0.922 93
Based on the descriptive analysis (Wilks’ Lambda Sig. < 0.001, Partial Eta Squared = 0.366, Observed Power = 1.000), the respondents have demonstrated positive research impression toward their incoming Japan mobility program (4.032±0.585) and reported positive research experience after returned from the program (4.394±0.551). For instance, we deduce the overall positive response recorded by Malaysian researchers and students was resulted from conducive research environment of Japanese universities/institutes, helpful team members at Japanese laboratories and fruitful research visits. Specifically, 96.8% of the respondents had indicated that they enjoyed the mobility program.
On the other hand, the research impacts of mobility program before COVID-19 outbreak received relatively mild positive responses. Going deeper, continuous knowledge and skills sharing between Malaysian and Japanese researchers recorded a mean score of 3.974±0.719, maintenance of networking and communication recorded a mean score of 3.831±0.810 while the pursue of scientific productivity recorded a mean score of 3.498±1.016. The quantitative findings are meaningful in studying the behavioral pattern of Malaysian researchers in attending Japan mobility program (Lee & Bozeman, 2005). The seemingly weakened impacts after the Malaysian researchers returned to Malaysia require further investigation and improvement (Woolley, Robinson-García, & Costas, 2017).
The disturbance on knowledge and skills sharing (4.050±0.730) as well as maintenance of networking and communication between Malaysian and Japanese researchers (3.831±0.810) due to COVID-19 pandemic have been apparent. The disturbance effect is attributed to the central role of physical visit during the mobility program to carry out physical discussion and teamwork among researchers. Nevertheless, COVID-19 outbreak has halted all physical visits and curtailed the interaction. Meanwhile, the disruption on scientific productivity (3.731±0.922) is the lowest among these three components. Initiatively, scientific productivity can be reflected from the perspective of research outputs such as joint publication (Gan, Ramlee, Wahab, Lee, & Shimizu, 2021) and international grant proposal writing. These outputs can be continued at home country with the convenient use of information and communication technology (ICT) (Vriens, Petegem, Op de Beeck, & Achten, 2010).
Table 2 shows the univariate pairwise comparison between the disturbance endured by research impact before and after the COVID-19 outbreak (Greenhouse-Geisser sig. < 0.001, Partial Eta Squared = 0.112, Observed Power = 1.000). Accordingly, the disturbance of COVID-19 pandemic on the maintenance of research networking and communication has shown significant effect (𝑝 = 0.000). Meanwhile, knowledge 𝑝 = 1.000 and skills sharing and
scientific productivity (𝑝 = 0.298) have insignificant effect. The overall pairwise results are almost in line with our descriptive analysis.
Table 2: Pairwise comparisons of research components before and after the COVID-19 outbreak (𝑝 <
0.05)
Components Mean
Difference
Std.
Error
Sig. 95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper
Bound Knowledge_Pre vs
Knowledge_Post -0.075 0.075 1.000 -0.303 -0.152
Networking_Pre vs
Networking_Post 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Productivity_Pre vs
Productivity_Post -0.233 0.098 0.298 -0.529 0.063
The significant effect demonstrated by networking and communication component highlights the limitation of virtual platform in upholding effective interaction between different research teams at international level after the COVID-19 outbreak. Implicitly, we hypothesize the significant disturbance effect is also attributed to the hindrance of building effective bond with Japanese researchers, given that Japanese society has a great emphasis on trust and reputation.
This could be a regional pattern which is observed in Asian related mobility programs.
Nonetheless, further investigation will be needed to verify the hypothesis as there has been a lack of studies concentrate on Asian mobility program.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we have proposed a survey to study the research experience of Malaysian researchers and students who have participated in Japan mobility program and then analysed the disturbance of COVID-19 pandemic on the long term research progress. According to our best knowledge, this is the first survey which targets Malaysian who attended mobility program in Japan. Based on the results, COVID-19 has significant disturbance impact on networking and communication. The study serves vital source of information to enhance the implementation of international research mobility in post COVID-19 era.
Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the fund provided by the Toshiba International Foundation (TIFO) in supporting this study, the help provided by the JST in distributing the questionnaires and the assistance provided by volunteers from Malaysia Alumni of Sakura Science Association (MASSA) during the survey conduct.
References
Boring, P., Flanagan, K., Gagliardi, D., Kaloudis, A., & Karakasidou, A. (2015). International mobility: Findings from a survey of researchers in the EU. Science and Public Policy Advance Access, 1-16.
European Commission. (2013). Support for continued data collection and analysis concerning mobility patterns and career paths of researchers. Retrieved from Deliverable 5 – Higher Education Sector Report (Indicator report):
Gan, H.-S., Ramlee, M. H., Wahab, A. A., Lee, Y.-S., & Shimizu, A. (2021). From classical to deep learning: review on cartilage and bone segmentation techniques in knee
osteoarthritis research. Artificial Intelligence Review, 54, 2445–2494.
doi:10.1007/s10462-020-09924-4
Guthrie, S., Lichten, C., Corbett, J., & Wooding, S. (2017). International mobility of researchers: A review of the literature. Retrieved from RAND Europe:
Hiroyuki, Y. (2013). An Evaluation of and Recommendation for the Look East Policy: Toward the Discovery of Japan's Second Wave. Retrieved from JAMS Discussion Paper No.2:
Jacob, M., & Meek, V. L. (2013). Scientific mobility and international research networks:
trends and policy tools for promoting research excellence and capacity building. Studies in Higher Education, 38(3), 331-344. doi:10.1080/03075079.2013.773789
Lee, S., & Bozeman, B. (2005). The impact of research collaboration on scientific productivity.
Social Studies of Science, 35(5), 673-702.
Vriens, M., Petegem, W., Op de Beeck, I., & Achten, M. (2010, 01/01). Virtual mobility as an alternative or complement to physical mobility. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, Barcelona, Spain.
Wagner, C. S., Whetsell, T., Baas, J., & Jonkers, K. (2018). Openness and Impact of Leading Scientific Countries. Frontiers in Research Metrics and Analytics, 3(10).
doi:10.3389/frma.2018.00010
Woolley, R., Robinson-García, N., & Costas, R. (2017). Global research collaboration:
Networks and partners in South East Asia. ArXiv, abs/1712.06513, 1-25.
