Standardization research is a fairly new and is a still-evolving field of research, with possibly major practical ramifications. This article presents a summary of the authors' subjective views of the most pressing research topics in the field. These include, among others, standards (e.g. incorporation of ethical issues), the potential impact of standards, the corporate management of standardization and legal issues like Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). In addition, gaps have been identified with a respect to a basic understanding of standardization, suggesting a need for better education in the field.

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Japan has a long history of systematically organizing and carrying out joint research projects between industrial, government and academic institutions. Even competing industries have cooperated in these research projects, and such cooperation has greatly helped Japan's economic progress. The country's technological progress has equalled in some areas and surpassed in others that of countries in the West, and, with the continued advancement of big business, Japan has arrived at a stage at which it can continue its technological progress on its own. This is causing great changes in the meaning and impact of cooperative research endeavours. In this paper the author discusses the problems and possible solutions involved in developing the current cooperative research systems into efficient systems which meet the needs of this new generation of research. He also outlines the potential influence of these changes on the procedures and policies in the current research system, and on user interaction and the results achieved. The paper also constructs a model of a cooperative research system which can meet the country's current requirements.

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