Review of Research Policy and Funding Arrangements for Higher Education:
Issues Paper, August 2015
Response by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL)
This response was prepared on behalf of CAUL by the CAUL Research Advisory Committee and the CAUL Executive.
Contact the CAUL Office at or 02 6125 2990
16 September 2015
Submission
Introduction
The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) is pleased to have the opportunity to provide comment on the issues and options raised in Review of Research Policy and Funding Arrangements.
CAUL, as the peak leadership organisation for university libraries in Australia, seeks to enhance the value and capacity of Australian university libraries and to influence scholarship, learning, and information policies and practices relevant to Australian higher education. Our members are the University Librarians or equivalent of institutions which have representation on Universities Australia.
CAUL acknowledges the important contribution university libraries make towards research innovation through the provision of expert advice and tailored services to researchers. The contribution made by university libraries is critical to the success of Australia’s higher education system, one of the chief components of an innovation system. A number of major changes in research and innovation practice have increased the value that CAUL can bring, including:
· changes in research practices, with data being increasingly seen as a valuable output of research;
· the emergence of alternative approaches to discovery, dissemination and access to research information;
· a policy environment that advocates for the outputs of publicly funded research being openly accessible;
· the broader application and importance of contemporary information management skills to research support and innovation.
University libraries are leaders of change within their institutions, especially with regard to the effective adoption of new technologies to augment research practice as well as the preservation, discoverability and access to research outputs.
CAUL values which are relevant to a national innovation system include:
· collaboration within and across sectors;
· commitment to resource sharing;
· commitment to access to information, ideas and creative works without censorship;
· respect for the intellectual and creative endeavours of others;
· equitable access to services and resources;
· innovation in the application of new technologies and service models;
· excellence in operational and service delivery; and
· openness, responsiveness and customer focus.
Further details about CAUL and its activities can be found at http://www.caul.edu.au/
Over the past few years the role of university libraries has expanded to provide sophisticated services for research and innovation in higher education through:
· provision of repositories to store, promote and preserve the digital assets and outputs of universities;
· management and, increasingly, creation of research resources such as datasets and digital collections;
· publication, especially electronic publication, of material based on research;
· support for innovation in scholarly expression and communication;
· services for measuring and increasing research impact;
· provision of advice on data management policy and planning, metadata, standards and persistent identifiers; and
· transformation of services and physical facilities to support the development of students’ lifelong learning skills.
· collaboration with Research Offices to deliver the HERDC and ERA reporting and audit process.
Research Block Grants and Performance of the Research System
The “Review of Research Policy”, describes impediments and opportunities to address Australia’s acknowledged problems in marrying university research activity and outcomes with industry requirements. It considers a range of issues, including knowledge transfer generally and the creation of incentives to encourage engagement between university researchers and industry.
In its review of the metrics now used to determine the Research Block Grant [RBG], the paper [at 2.3.5] asks if the process sufficiently incentivizes researchers and institutions to engage with industry. The Review also asks [at 4.2.9] whether engagement between universities and industry could be effectively measured, via engagement metrics, which account for knowledge transfer activity, and by usage metrics, which measure knowledge publishing and access.
Comment:
RBG is determined, in part, by the annual HERDC return [2.2.11]. In its earlier report, “Vision for a Science Nation”[1], the Government said that it would “develop a policy to ensure that more publicly-funded research findings are shared openly and available to be used commercially or in other ways that will bring the greatest benefit to Australians.” One way to measure, encourage and reward the adoption of such a policy would be to extend HERDC to report on the proportion of research outputs available to industry and the community generally in this way. RBG could become an enabler of open access [OA] to research- through funding for improved infrastructure or funding targeted towards support for OA to research outputs.
Relatedly, the paper also discusses [at 4.2.9 and 4.2.35] means by which engagement between universities and business for knowledge transfer could be measured. It refers to the potential of usage metrics for published outputs, including citations but also web usage data. In this context, the paper cites the ATSE report “Research Engagement for Australia: Measuring research engagement between universities and end users”[2] which suggests the “Number of research publications published in OA repository[ies]” as a useful measure.
Recommendation:
Consideration should be given to incentivizing industry engagement through the inclusion of the OA status of the research outputs reported as part of the HERDC return. Consideration could also be given to methods for measuring and rewarding engagement via usage metrics. Such methods could, if validated, include the metrics proposed in the ATSE REA report. Other emerging international measures of OA usage, such as those from IRUS-UK[3] and CrossRef[4], should be monitored and assessed for their utility in reliably and usefully reporting access as measures of engagement by industry.
It would be important to avoid unnecessarily increasing the reporting burden on researchers and institutions to meet this measurement need and therefore investing in relevant infrastructure to allow for the automation of such reporting is vital. This would mean encouraging the adoption of international metadata standards for identifying the OA status of research outputs and putting in place systems to automate the capture and reporting of this data into university research systems and repositories and then making this data easily aggregated at a national level for analysis.
Such aggregation would require extending the capacity of the existing institutional repository network in Australia – the primary means for identifying and making available funded research outputs – to work more effectively, including the ability to exchange data within and between national and international repository networks.
Support for the myriad forms of OA publishing should be expanded, including the identification of the most cost-effective means of achieving OA within the existing publishing system.
2
[1] Vision for a Science Nation. Responding to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics: Australia’s Future
https://consult.industry.gov.au/science-and-commercialisation-policy-division/vision-for-a-science-nation
[2] Research Engagement for Australia: Measuring research engagement between universities and end users
https://www.atse.org.au/content/publications/reports/industry-innovation/research-engagement-for-australia.aspx
[3] IRUS-UK, "a Jisc-funded national aggregation service"
http://www.irus.mimas.ac.uk/
[4] CrossRef."DOI Event Tracker Pilot"
http://crosstech.crossref.org/2015/03/crossrefs-doi-event-tracker-pilot.html