ATSE has had a keen interest in ensuring that publicly funded research is effectively translated to improve Australia’s economic, social and environmental prosperity and wellbeing, primarily through the development of the Research Engagement for Australia metrics of research engagement.
The REA metrics are designed to ensure that our publicly funded researchers are adequately incentivised to engage with research end-users, including those in the private sector, government and non-profit sector.
The ATSE response highlights the difficulties in assessing research impact, as opposed to engagement. Attempting to measure the impact of university research presents a number of challenges, including the potentially long time lags involved, the diversity of indicators of impact across disciplines, and the limited usefulness of using impact to indicate collaboration. While it is only readily possible to ‘assess’ research impact, research engagement can be ‘measured’. ATSE has strongly recommended that the proposed NISA process focus primarily on research engagement, not impact.
As recommended in the REA Pilot report, a small number of explanatory ‘vignettes’ may be useful in providing narrative context for metrics-based measures. However in most situations, case studies are a seriously lagged indicator. The REA methodology provides a repeatable and verifiable measure, as opposed to case study-based approaches, where the merits of each case study have to be gauged by a panel.
One of the guiding principles of REA was to utilise existing data as much as possible, to ensure that the administrative burden on universities and researchers is minimised. For this reason, the REA metrics are calculated using data already submitted by universities to the ARC and the Department of Education and Training (DET) REA would offer a balancing measure that would allow the ability to compare universities’ performance in given disciplines for both research excellence (via ERA) and research engagement (via REA).
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