Relation between awarding of Grants-in-aid for scientific research and characteristics of applicants in Japanese universities

Japan’s system of Grants-in-aid for scientific research aims to promote creative and pioneering research across a wide spectrum of fields, ranging from the humanities and social sciences to the natural sciences. The grants, amounting to 191 billion JPY (in 2006 FY) per year, are the main sources of competitive research funds for applicants belonging to national and public universities. In this paper, we examine this system by performing a statistical analysis on the relation between the awarding of grants and the attributes of applicants, including field, degree, position, and other covariates. We used Poisson, negative binomial distributions, their generalized linear models and logistic regressions for implementing covariates to the model. The analysis reveals interesting features of academic fields as well as the attributes of the awarded applicants.