campusreview. com. au industry & research to publish and be cited. Citations are not the only thing measured in the ERA, but are an extremely significant contributor.
We think it’ s important that the Australian community and the Australian Government receive a measurable return on investment in research beyond just the research itself. It must be translated into community benefit and commercial benefit.
Your group is leading the development of an engagement metric, which you’ re saying can be published alongside the ERA. How will this work and how will it benefit researchers? ATSE first formally proposed that we needed a metric like this around the middle of last year. The need to measure impact or engagement is not a novel idea – the Australian Technology Network( ATN) has been looking at this for several years. ATSE itself has been internally debating this for many years.
In the UK, they have the REF, the measure of impact through case studies. We are opting for a metrics-based means of evaluating engagement as a more practical approach.
Engagement is not the end of the story. Ultimately, what you want is impact, but measuring impact is difficult. In the past, it’ s been done with case studies. They are great, but they are time consuming, expensive, a burden on the universities and the panels, and a lagging indicator. We believe by measuring engagement we’ re getting an early proxy for impact.
How necessary is it to implement this engagement metric? What will the future of research look like if we don’ t implement something like this? Well, I could say the future of research in Australia would be more of the same. If you look at the OECD data, Australia comes in absolutely last on collaboration between innovative companies and universities in publicly funded research agencies.
We know from studies around the world that research drives economic benefits for countries in the long term. So if we don’ t do this, and things stay the same, we’ re not capturing the benefit for Australia that we should. I’ m not sure the research sector would continue to get the support of government that it’ s had in the past. The minister of education, the minister of industry and science, the prime minister – they’ re all talking about the importance of reaping national benefit from our research endeavours. We need to be able to show it and we need to be able to encourage it.
If the industry does implement this engagement metric you’ re proposing, how do you start rewarding researchers based on their engagement performance? Well, the first step, of course, will be acceptance by the university sector and the Australian Research Council that the metric we are proposing is robust and delivers a meaningful measure of engagement.
So we’ re doing a study at the moment with the support of the Department of Education, the Department of Industry and Science and the ARC.
We are on the verge of submitting our report to the departments. Once that’ s in, we are going to undertake a study with about half a dozen universities, where we deep dive to test the robustness of what we’ ve got. There will be refinements that will ensue but if it works out as we anticipate, then its ultimate use depends on the Department of Education and the ARC accepting that it is worthwhile.
Ideally, we’ re trying to use existing data so the effort to collect it doesn’ t prevent anybody from adopting this if it’ s useful. Once the ARC and the Department of Education accept that it’ s worthwhile, then it will be evaluated routinely as part of the two-year cycle of data collection, alongside the ERA.
Then the big question becomes,“ What of it?” OK, we believe there are two reasons the REA would drive the kind of behaviour the government – and many university leaders and researchers themselves – are seeking. They want encouragement to reach out, work with industry and work with communities to see the fruits of their research translated.
The first driver would be reputational. If you get a good score in the REA it would be just as important to the researcher and the faculty as a good score in the ERA. The second driver would be financial. If money is linked to the REA score, then it becomes an even stronger motivator.
The ERA has proved that the amount of money doesn’ t have to be large. The ERA does influence funding for universities, but the amount subject to the ERA is $ 65 million, which is a tiny percentage in a multibillion-dollar sector. Yet, as you know, the ERA influences behaviour. n
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