IP & Art

A professor once shared his concerns while comparing writing a thesis to writing a column in the professor's work. In the end, the professor came to the conclusion that the thesis was more important and agreed that it was also a professor-like conclusion.

However, although I used to be an adjunct professor, I am mainly active as a field practitioner. Therefore, as a writer, I feel that the column has more meaning than the thesis. Of course, since I lack the ability to write a dissertation, I would like to honestly admit that a self-consoling excuse was added to this conclusion.

In the past, when access to professional knowledge itself was limited, information asymmetry was clearly added. Therefore, some privileged class with specialized knowledge and an expert group with guaranteed access were created and received a lot of attention. Therefore, for experts such as professors, it was important to create more specialized knowledge, and furthermore, it was important to properly educate and inform the public about it.

But now, too much expertise is scattered and public. And the area of specialization is very finely divided. In the real world where these expertise are fused, the generalization process that makes it easier to understand has become important for the use of these expertise. Therefore, the role of informing the general public of these specialized knowledge more easily is becoming more and more important. In this sense, the role of a columnist who reorganizes and informs the general public about specialized knowledge is newly highlighted.

Let me actually take an example. In a foreign country, a young doctoral student and an advisor conducted research together and published a thesis. However, there was a problem with who will be the FIRST AUTHOR, so I decided to leave it to luck and toss it in a coin.

Since then, professors have continued to publish only papers, and students have been writing columns to easily inform the general public about their expertise in the field. After that, students were more widely known than professors, and there were many people who praised this work in evaluation. Although the professor received a very good reputation and evaluation at the time...

In the era of big data like the present, it is important to analyze a lot of data and information rather than to acquire knowledge and to cultivate the ability to accurately evaluate and analyze them and utilize them. In this regard, I believe that the role of professional columnists who can easily interpret professional knowledge is important and needs to be produced a lot. Therefore, a new meaning should be given to these research methods in the field of academic research as well.

Overseas, some universities or research institutes are too fixated on traditional research methods, and they are also concerned with research methods and meanings that are more generalized in a new academic field in the era of big data, namely, numerous specialized knowledge, widely recognized by the public, and improved reliability. I think a new perception is needed. It is because I do not think that emphasizing only the traditional research method is not in line with the times.

In the field of law, it is true that the school emphasizes only the theoretical part, so it is somewhat different from the general public. In addition, since these specialized knowledge cannot be shared and sympathized with policy officials, there are many cases where experts do not have proper direction even though they are participating as advisors.

Therefore, a more convergence approach or a new attempt to reorganize to be more popular-friendly should be respected in the research area of specialized studies. Recently, I had discussions with some professors to conduct research in the form of interviews with experts in each country.

If you cling to too conservative and stereotyped ideas, you can miss out on a big new wave. It is an era where it is most important to close the gap between academics and the general public. This is because it is important to be exposed to the public more and to help policy makers to have diverse and many insights through the opinions of various scholars and their logic.

Complex and difficult papers are also important in the academic field, but the concise curator-style approach is also meaningful in a limited way, and it is necessary to make efforts to break down the affinity and boundary between the academic field and the popular field by using it. see. In the future, I hope that among the professors, there will be people who put more effort into column activities rather than thesis papers.

In particular, it is expected that the research method will be open to more flexible methods than traditional methods. New attempts always inevitably trigger some objections, so I think it is necessary to constantly maintain one's beliefs and to put forth effort and courage to carry out new challenges to the end.