A Study of Research Performance against KAKEN, using Osaka University as a Case Study

Abstract

To propose a new method of comparing performance between studies on the same subject at different institutions,  we obtained information on grant amounts, keywords related to the research, and the number of achievements for all projects from Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKEN) Database. From this database, we obtained information on research projects conducted between FY 2015 and FY 2019 and classified them into 10 groups according to their budget amounts. Therefore, we focused on 12 research institutes and compared the number of research achievements in each group. As a result, especially in the range of 1 ~ 6 million yen, there was a significant difference in the number of achievements per million yen between Tokyo Institute of Technology (Ti) and Osaka University (Os). We calculated the amount and number of achievements for each keyword for this range of projects. Results showed no significant differences for keywords common to both institutions. However, when comparing the keywords specific to each, Ti's performance clearly exceeded that of Os. In the future, it is expected that correcting the notational quirks and increasing the number of common keywords will help clarify the characteristics of keywords unique to each institution.