1.1 National and institutional research strategies
Is it research?
As a participant in this program, you may be someone who has been conducting research projects for some years now and may feel quite familiar with the basic skills and techniques. You would probably refer to yourself confidently as a 'researcher'. Yet if you ask a group of academics to define 'research', you will undoubtedly get many opinions and a long debate. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines research as comprising creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture, and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. This includes pure basic research, strategic basic research, applied research, and experimental development. If what you are doing doesn't fit within this definition, then it isn't research as it is known by the international research community.
Categories of research income
Within the different types of research it is useful to understand that there are four main categories of research income defined by the Commonwealth Government. You will often hear these terms used around your university and they occupy a place of considerable importance in the research budget and planning of your institution, something which will have direct and indirect effects on you as a member of that institution.
- Category 1: National Competitive Grants (Commonwealth Competitive Grants and Non-Commonwealth Competitive Grants)
- Category 2: Other Public Sector Funding (Local Government; State Government and Other Commonwealth Government)
- Category 3: Industry and Other Funding (Australian Contracts; Australian Grants; Donations, Bequests and Foundations; International Funding and Other Funding)
- Category 4: Cooperative Research Centre Funding.
Go8 universities tend to focus on Category 1 income, and this is usually their major source of research income, with the big funding players being the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council. Other universities may have a more diversified strategy.
There are a number of reasons why Category 1 research income is important to universities. The main one is prestige, but there are also practical aspects of which you may not be aware. For example, universities receive Commonwealth funding for research infrastructure under the Research Infrastructure Block Grants Scheme (RIBG). The RIBG allocations reflect the relative success of each institution in attracting Category 1 funds. A university's total research income (for all four categories) is also used as part of a formula that determines the amount of funding received under Joint Research Engagement (JRE) funding. This scheme provides essential funds for research and research training activities within your institution. As you can gather, success begets success, and every researcher wants to belong to a successful university.
Receiving funding from Category 1 research schemes is what you and your research team will usually be expected to focus upon. However, you should not ignore the other categories of research income. The industry sector is the largest source of research and development funding in the country, with its own priorities. However, the vast majority of its resources stay within the industry sector. To access industry funds you need to go out to industry and find out what they want from you, your team and institution, not wait for them to come to you.
Being strategic and opportunistic
All universities and all researchers exist in an increasingly competitive environment for research funding. You and your university need to be adaptive to survive, and a 'balanced portfolio' can help. This is about having a mixture of funded projects that may cover different research income categories. At different times and over a period of years, the balance may shift. One example of this might be seen in defence-related research, which, being a national research priority, can receive public funding as well as funding from the defence industry.
As an individual researcher you need to understand the local and national strategic dimension to research funding. However, you also need to keep an open mind about the exact type of research that you are willing and able to conduct. There is a great demand for high quality research, and a lot of organisations that are willing to pay for results. You sometimes need to seize research funding opportunities that may be outside of your normal experience, but for which you have transferable skills. For example, while microwave radar was developed for defence applications, it can be used in global remote sensing applications to estimate global forest biomass for input into climate change predictions.
Strategic research priorities
The strategic research priorities (SRPs) were developed by the Commonwealth Government and are designed to focus Australian research into areas which will contribute significantly to the economic, social, and environmental needs of Australia.
The five themes of the strategic research priorities are:
- Living in a changing environment
- Promoting population health and wellbeing
- Managing our food and water assets
- Securing Australia’s place in a changing world
- Lifting productivity and economic growth.
Please refer to http://www.industry.gov.au/research/Pages/StrategicResearchPriorities.aspx for a detailed description of each strategic research priority and its associated priority goals.
Researchers applying to either the ARC or NHMRC will be required to outline how their proposed research project will address one of the above SRPs. The SRPs may change in future so it is important to check their currency online before embarking on a grant application or any other justification of research in relation to the strategic research priorities. Your research proposal can be at an advantage if you can show strong alignment between your research (including the research infrastructure of your university) and the SRPs.
Institutional strategy
Every university has a strategic plan, usually designed to cover a period of a few years and sometimes having annual updates. The strategic plan aims to lay out the main priorities for the university within an overarching theme. Most will have a dedicated section on research, and some will have separate research plans and annual operational plans. Part of thinking strategically is to be aware of the priorities of your institution, as that tends to be where significant amounts of funding will be directed. Through awareness of these, you are better able to respond to opportunity, or to create opportunity. This can also work in the other direction over time, as strong research leaders and their teams help to shape the strategic direction of the university.
Here are a few examples taken from a couple of university strategic plans:
University of Melbourne
“The University of Melbourne aims to be one of the finest universities in the world. ‘Growing Esteem’ is the University's strategy for achieving high regard and for making a distinctive contribution to society. The strategy is conceived with the metaphor of a triple helix: three strands of core activities, each sharply focused and well-resourced, and all mutually supportive. The core activities of the University of Melbourne are research, learning and teaching and engagement.”
(http://growingesteem.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/322437/GrowingEsteem2010.pdf)
University of Adelaide
"The University's mission is to be recognised as a great research university and to use that as the platform for excellence in teaching and learning. This is, of course, an enduring objective. Greatness is not achieved overnight, nor even within the five year timeframe of a single plan. It is vital though to begin to put in place the essential elements of the platform on which greatness might be built. Our goals can only be achieved with the support and involvement of the University community as a whole, as well as through an increasing level of engagement with government, industry and the wider community. Fully understanding the crucial scholarly contribution we can make to contemporary society and fulfilling that contribution are integral to this Plan, as is our commitment to developing mutually beneficial working partnerships with the community. This is the primary role of a great research university, and it is something to which we should all aspire.”
(http://www.adelaide.edu.au/VCO/strategicplan/)
University of New South Wales
UNSW’s aspiration is to continuously improve our position as a leading research intensive university in the Asia–Pacific region, focusing on contemporary and social issues through defined strengths in professional, scientific and technological fields. We seek to make a significant contribution to the development of knowledge, to learning and teaching, to our students, and to society.
(http://www.unsw.edu.au/about-us/strategic-intent)
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