Could Distributed Peer Review Better Decide Grant Funding?
The landscape of academic grant funding is notoriously competitive and plagued by lengthy, bureaucratic processes, exacerbated by difficulties in finding willing reviewers. Distributed […]
Meanwhile, Impact Down Under
Australia has been sampling a variety of tests for measuring research impact for more than a decade, but has yet to settle on whether the ‘impact agenda’ is here to stay.
Special Pleading: Free Speech and Australian Universities
This is an edited version of a speech given by Glyn Davis, distinguished professor of political science at the Crawford School of Public Policy at Australian National University, at a summit to explore issues of academic freedom and autonomy hosted by the Australian National University.
In Australia, Publicly Funded Research Must Soon Prove Its Impact
Starting in 2018, Australian universities will be required to prove their research provides concrete benefits for taxpayers and the government, who fund it.
Does Australia’s Nudge Unit Need Its Own Nudge?
Evidence shows that the Australian government’s ‘nudge unit’ may be the wrong way to address major problems like inequality, argue Andrew Frain and Randal Tame.
Unpacking the Ethics of Research on Sexual Assault
Why does it matter if research is ethical or not? And what steps could or should have been taken to ensure that issues such as those the Australian Human Rights Commission now faces — in a case related to well-intentioned research into sexual assault — are avoided?
Five Considerations for Any Policy to Measure Research Impact
An Australian directive to measure the engagement with and impact of academic research can itself by improved by applying new research.
In Australia, Academic Contracts Threaten Freed Speech
Academics need to retain their freedom to speak on matters of interest, which intersect with their specialized knowledge, even where that intersection is tangential or not visible to others.
Inane Criticism of ‘Absurd’ Research Leaves No One the Wiser
Perhaps the solution to conflicting spending priorities, write Rod Lamberts and Will J. Grant, is simply to acknowledge that people will always have conflicting priorities, and think about how best to live alongside each other: mythical, homogeneous pub-goer and irrelevant, out-of-touch academic alike.
