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ACNet CANPAN Academic Network

CANPAN Academic Network(ACNet) makes a great contribution to the development of world's scholarly pursuits
through assisting clerical work of academic societies and establishing academic information platform.
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ACNet, or CANPAN Academic Network is an organization established in pursuit of supporting
the advancement of academic researches worldwide. Now including organizational operation assistance
as a service, we use the information infrastructure and best of our knowledge gained
by running a public site for public interest.

Our Reasons For Assisting the academia ---Why Now?---

Based on the recognition of the key for advancing Japanese academic researches as enhancing functions of academic societies, we are convinced that abilities for "organization management" and "information distribution" being pivotal.

In the Third Science and Technology Basic Plan formulated in March 2006, was stated "in order to elevate the international status in science and technology of our nation, we are in need to encourage self-help efforts of academic societies to restructure and strengthen their functions". Also revealed in the survey of Science Council of Japan, reinforcing operation structure of administrative office, digitalizing, and improving access from home or abroad are being required.

Reasons for strengthening the organization management ability of academia

Running an academic society requires highly organized management skills, due to its needs for promoting its research projects, hosting conventions for colloquies and presenting research results, or editing and publishing academic journals. However, many academic societies are struggling with their employment of office personnel caused by the stagnation in the number of members and financial income.
Research results for organization management of academic societies
  • About 40% of the academic societies do not hold office personnel
Voices of the members
  • Demands for strengthening office and management system
  • Demands for maintaining member information on the Web at once
  • Demands for introducing online membership registration
  • Demands for increasing the rate of membership fee collection
  • Demands for restructuring employee numbers and strengthening economic bases
  • Demands for obtaining status as a legal entity

Reasons for needing improvement on information distribution

Academic societies hold much information such as human resource information of experts and professionals or results of their research activities that would much benefit public interest. However, many of the academic societies find it difficult to get their hands on improving information exchange amongst the members or opening up their resources to public, due to time and monetary restrictions.
The survey upon information distribution for academic societies revealed:
  • Only 2% of the academic societies’ spending is related to their sharing information.
  • Only 31.5% make their publications and research papers available on e-journals.
  • Not more than 45.6% of societies create digital archives of research papers.
Voices of the members of academic societies
  • Demands for reinforcing communications amongst members
  • Demands for exchanging relevant information with other societies
  • Demands for enhancing public relations activities
  • Demands for gaining activities for public

Reference: Survey upon improvement of functions for academic societies, June 2007

ACNetのサービス内容についてはこちら

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