Times Higher Education - Research Intelligence - Measured weights and measures

The Australian Research Council's recent indication that it will become the latest funder to institute an open-access mandate is one of the first acts of its new chief executive, Aidan Byrne. The former dean of science and director of the College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences at the Australian National University, Professor Byrne, a physicist, took up the ARC post in July. He has already begun consulting the country's universities on bringing the ARC's open-access policy into line with that of the country's other public research funder, the National Health and Medical Research Council. The latter announced in February that it would require papers arising from its funding to be made available in an open-access repository within 12 months of publication. Professor Byrne welcomed the fact that the two organisations were collaborating on such 'mutual concerns', but he rejected the suggestion that the ARC should absorb its cousin and bring clinical medicine and dentistry within its otherwise comprehensive funding remit. 'The two organisations are faced with some distinct issues and challenges, and the separate arrangements generally work well,' he said. The ARC is a statutory authority reporting to Australia's minister for tertiary education, skills, science and research. However, Professor Byrne said it had sufficient independence to advise the government and was guided in most matters primarily by its own advisory council of senior academics and business people, which he chairs. But he endorsed the government's expressed view that 'a more significant weighting should be placed on measuring the impact and application of research'. He suggested that even though Australia's national research evaluation exercise, the ARC-administered Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), already uses some measures of 'research application', such as patents, industry funding and successful commercialisation, it might in future encompass 'additional measures of research application, knowledge exchange and collaboration'. Such an evolution, he said, would be in keeping with the 'pragmatism' that was 'characteristic of Australian public policy'.