Science and the economy

A guidebook to accurately analyse the benefits of research projects has been released by the Cooperative Research Centres Association (CRCA).

The guide aims to arm scientists with the tools to improve their ability to accurately assess the benefit to the economy of their research.

"We commissioned the report for the use of our member CRCs," the association's CEO, Michael Hartmann, said.

"It soon became clear however that the application of these concepts were not limited to CRCs but to the entire scientific community. For that reason we are making the report publicly available through free download from our website."

"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.

"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 particularly the universities as they develop systems to measure their research impact in the Research Quality Framework"

The guidebook, "Impact Monitoring and Evaluation Framework: Background and Assessment Approaches" was commissioned by the CRC Association and produced by Deloittes - Insight Economics.

The guidebook details the difficulties in assessing the economic impact of scientific endeavours, yet shows that the task is not impossible if the approach is considered at the commencement of the research project.

The concepts are contextualised using CRCs as examples, and templates provided to assist researchers plan and complete their impact assessments.

It is available from the CRCA's website

Source: CRC Association