Definition of research
See also Definition of Research Active staffAccording to Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) specifications for the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC), research comprises:
- Creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications [1].
- Any activity classified as research which is characterised by originality; it should have investigation as a primary objective and should have the potential to produce results that are sufficiently general for humanity's stock of knowledge (theoretical and/or practical) to be recognisably increased. Most higher education research work would qualify as research.
- Pure basic research, strategic basic research, applied research and experimental development.
Activities that support research and meet this definition
- Provision of professional, technical, administrative or clerical support and/or assistance to staff directly engaged in research and experimental development.
- Management of staff who are either directly engaged in research and experimental development or are providing professional, technical or clerical support or assistance to those staff.
- Activities of students undertaking postgraduate research courses.
- Development of postgraduate research courses.
- Supervision of students undertaking postgraduate research courses.
Activities that do not support research (and must be excluded)
- Preparation for teaching.
- Scientific and technical information services.
- General purpose or routine data collection.
- Standardisation and routine testing.
- Feasibility studies (except into research and experimental development projects).
- Specialised routine medical care.
- Commercial, legal and administrative aspects of patenting, copyright or licensing activities.
- Routine computer programming, systems work or software maintenance (research and experimental development into applications software, new programming languages and new operating systems would normally meet the definition of research).
[1] OECD (2002), Frascati Manual. Proposed Standard Practice for Surveys on Research and Experimental Development. OECD: Paris.
'Research active' staff
The University of Melbourne Academic Board has established criteria for academic staff to be defined as 'research active'.This measure is used for internal planning purposes, and especially to enable performance trends to be examined at departmental and faculty levels. The definition represents a threshold level for inclusion in research statistics.
It is recognised that such definitions cannot easily capture all aspects of research scholarship, many of which are poorly measured when assessing research outputs. Most important among these are the quality and impact of research. However, many other research contributions are highly valued by the university but are not measured directly. These include collaboration, synergy, technical support and critical appraisal of the work of others. In addition the University acknowledges the value of strategically important research that may be intrinsically ‘low yield’ or ‘long haul’ and is not adequately reflected in the definition.
- Research active staff definition (Academic Board, 2005)