Guidelines for analysing research economics

The Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) Association has released a guidebook designed to greatly improve scientists’ ability to accurately assess the economical benefit of their research.

“We commissioned the report for the use of our member CRCs. It soon became clear, however, that the application of these concepts were not limited to CRCs but to the entire scientific community,” said CEO of the CRC Association, Michael Hartmann.

“For that reason, we are making the report publicly available through free download from our website.”

The CRC Association officially presented the report to the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop and the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr.

“This is a landmark report and provides a clear direction into how the impact of research may be assessed in economic terms. The robust approach means that the results are believable and not over-emphasised,” said Hartmann.

“We have chosen to make this guidebook freely available as we believe it will prove to be of great assistance to all researchers, and in particular the universities as they develop systems to measure their research impact in the Research Quality Framework.”

Titled Impact Monitoring and Evaluation Framework: Background and Assessment Approaches, the report was commissioned by the CRC Association and produced by Deloittes — Insight Economics.

The guidebook is available for download from www.crca.asn.au.