“Re:Rel” (Research/er Relation) is a New Role Needed in the Research Ecosystem

Note: This is a partial translation of the Japanese article posted on November 8th.

I’m Ryosuke Shibato, the CEO of academist, Inc. based in Tokyo. In this post, I would like to discuss the significance and potential of the new profession we are advocating called “Re:Rel (Research/Researcher Relations)”.

Towards Open Academia: In Need of A New Professional Role

For the past 10 years, we have been running academist, a system that connects researchers with stakeholders who support their research. We are currently rolling out three services — academist Crowdfunding, academist Fanclub, and academist Grant — with the vision of realizing “Open academia”.

As our business has grown and our team has expanded, we’ve realized that traditional job titles cannot fully express our work. Existing roles like “editor”, “web director”, “customer success”, or “fundraiser” are inadequate in describing the entirety of our roles. This led to the realization that the research ecosystem at large seems to be lacking a good label for the people undertaking similar roles.

This is why we came up with “Research / Researcher Relations (Re:Rel)” as a new, more comprehensive, and innovative profession that plays a critical role in realizing more Oopen academia.

What is Re:Rel?

The mission of Re:Rel (pronounced rirél) is three-fold: a) they help researchers create “visions”, b) build relationships with various stakeholders, and c) generate funding circulation that will enable the realization of the vision.

Three missions of a “Re:Rel”

Why focus on “vision”? We emphasize that researchers should articulate their research vision. The current world requires interdisciplinary perspectives that go beyond existing paradigms to address complex questions and societal challenges. This means not only interdisciplinary collaboration within academia but also across industry, the public sector, and citizens under a shared purpose. With a clear vision, each participant can define their role, enabling continuous collaboration.

At academist, we have collaborated with over 400 researchers to create research visions and engage stakeholders. Recently, our collaborations have expanded to include connections between researchers and companies, media, and local governments. Through this process, we gradually recognized our role as Re:Rels. We are now convinced that Re:Rel is the specialized profession that will drive Open academia.

In the Japanese research ecosystem, many outstanding people are working as technology transfer officers, science communicators, research administrators, etc. While Re:Rel has overlaps with these existing roles, its distinctive feature is that it starts from the researcher’s vision. To realize those visions, Re:Rels are expected to play active roles that go beyond merely being supporters of researchers.

Why Re:Rels are Necessary

Many people believe that the current Japanese research ecosystem is not in good shape. We believe the ecosystem’s heavy dependence on competitive public funds is a major cause. When the research grant application season arrives, researchers often talk about whether they “won” the grant or not. The grant selection, done through expert peer review, reflects criteria that are not disclosed to researchers. While this might be understandable for long-term, basic research grants, it incentivizes researchers to write proposals that are more likely to pass, often preventing them from fully pursuing their true vision.

The larger the vision, the more difficult it is to achieve by individual researchers alone. It requires leveraging the efforts of various stakeholders — not just the government, but also researchers from different fields, companies, and individuals. However, competitive funding application formats cannot effectively engage multiple stakeholders. This is where the role of “Re:Rel” becomes crucial — to comprehensively understand research visions, articulate them, and connect them with the right people.

By diversifying research funding sources, researchers can focus on their visions, creating what we call Open academia.

This momentum is growing year by year. In recent years, we have come across companies that pay attention to basic academic research that doesn’t immediately translate to business. They want to explore new business opportunities through such interaction. However, initiating such collaborations is difficult. Here, professionals who not only connect researchers with companies but who truly understand both parties’ visions are much wanted.

Re:Rels at academist

What do Re:Rels do specifically? We are still trying to clarify the required skills and the mindset of Re:Rel, let me explain its role through Academist’s three business areas.

• In academist Crowdfunding, Re:Rel collaborates with researchers to achieve crowdfunding goals. This involves hearing researchers’ visions, producing project web pages, and developing promotional strategies. Through dialogue, Re:Rel deeply understands the researcher’s vision and guides them to achieve funding goals by engaging individual supporters.
• In academist Grant, a Re:Rel collaborates with companies to distribute research grants to researchers. This requires a deep understanding of the company interested in connecting with academia.
• In academist Fanclub, a Re:Rel collaborates with stakeholders to create a team that conducts a research project. While still exploratory, ideally this will lead to many research projects conducted in a decentralized manner each with sustainable funding.

The job of a Re:Rel is not just connecting people. They actively envision future scenarios that stakeholders haven’t yet recognized. Many researchers who experienced academist Crowdfunding report non-monetary benefits from crowdfunding. Re:Rel helps find values that stakeholders know that they wanted retrospectively. We believe such creative tasks require human ingenuity even in this era of advanced AI.

Conclusion

In this post, I drew a rough sketch of Re:Rel as the new role in the research ecosystem. The “Re:” in Re:Rel implies reconstructing the relationship between research and stakeholders. While the concrete persona of Re:Rel remains fluid, we want to elaborate its concept through discussions with many stakeholders in the ecosystem. Please reach out if you are interested.

(edited by Ryuichi Maruyama)