Considerable progress has been made in developing the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) to assess the quality of academic research undertaken in universities but it is acknowledged the system will need to be refined as a result of experience gained.

One such refinement should address the problem that the ERA runs counter to the innovation policies being pursued by the Government as it is not well suited to assessing the quality of research directed at practical applications. Consequently there is a risk that this type of research will be afforded a lower priority in universities. This same issue has emerged in the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) where an approach is being piloted to address this shortcoming.

A system which retains the same structure as ERA can be developed for assessing quality of applied research, using the same submission processes, a linked committee structure, the same discipline clusters, ranking systems and units of evaluation.

By employing user evaluation, case studies and expert opinion via pro forma documentation and by defining a number of application categories under which the research can be assessed, the problem in measuring and ranking applied research outputs can be addressed.

In submitting research for evaluation, institutions would be asked to nominate the assessment categories and the weighting to be given to each category. The categories proposed are –

• a. Plant breeder’s rights, patents, registered designs (as per ERA)
• b. Research commercialisation income (as per ERA)
• c. Cost savings arising in the hands of the user
• d. Incremental revenue arising through application of the research
• e. Additional investment made as a result of the research
• f. Changes in environmental management practices arising from the research
• g. Government policy changes made as a result of the research
• h. Practice changes adopted by users resulting from the research
• i. Other benefits arising not covered by the nominated categories