The Australian | 7 November 2012
Measuring the economic impact and other flow-on effects will be part of a future national research audit, says Australian Research Council CEO Aidan Byrne.
A month before the release of the second research quality audit (Excellence in Research for Australia), Byrne says that while the initiative is rigorous in measuring academic excellence, “it’s not the only thing that we are able to measure, or indeed, ought to measure for universities”.
Universities aren’t uni-dimensional institutions, they perform a variety of roles and functions and academic quality is high up on the list of things they should be doing, but it’s not the only thing they should be doing. I’m quite open to including some other measures, and impact measures in particular.
He expects the work on impact being undertaken by the Australian Technology Network and Group of Eight universities “would demonstrate there are ways to measure impact and adapting ERA is something I look forward to being able to do in the future”.
Byrne also says he is going to rewrite the rules for ARC grants to include a commitment from researchers to provide open access to scholarly papers funded by public money, as the National Health and Medical Research Council has.
