Gender imbalance in scientific research

In a recent article in Nature researchers have used bibliometrics to highlight the gender disparity in the publication output within the sciences around the world. The study reveals that female scientists are publishing less volume than their male counterparts and that their publications have a lower citation impact as well. The authors touch on a number of well documented imbalances between the genders in the sciences including funding, earnings, hiring and patenting.

One of the issues the researchers had to get around in their study was how to determine gender of the authors of journal articles indexed by Thomson Reuters in the Web of Science. They used a combination of sources to match the name to a gender including social security databases, Wikipedia and even Facebook (the interesting methodology can be read in their supplementary material).

It would be interesting to see the same data normalized for funding. In many cases funding agencies are awarding more money to male scientists than to female scientists (e.g. from the ARC's website for Number of participants on all funded projects Male = 2280 and Female = 622). It would be interesting to know whether perhaps female scientists were achieving "more with less" when it came to publication output compared with funding and opportunity.

While there is no single answer to the problem these researchers are describing they do make a good point about improving the ability for female scientist to travel and collaborate internationally:

"For a country to be scientifically competitive, it needs to maximize its human intellectual capital. Our data suggest that, because collaboration is one of the main drivers of research output and scientific impact, programmes fostering international collaboration for female researchers might help to level the playing field."

Researcher mobility in all fields is a good strategy for any organisation that can afford it - and is certainly critical for any developed nation's research strategic plan.


http://www.nature.com/news/bibliometrics-global-gender-disparities-in-science-1.14321

Crowdfunding Research

Researchers at Deakin University have completed a really interesting pilot project using crowd-funding to source money for research projects. The pilot titled, Research My World, was run in partnership with crowd-funding site Pozible.com and is the first of its kind in Australia. Of the 8 projects put forward for funding 6 were funded (75% success rate!). However, not only did the pilot raise funds for the projects it also generated huge media and social-media attention for the projects and the researchers. In addition it provided an excellent introduction for the researchers to the use of social media in engaging the wider community in university research.

A copy of the Research My World pilot project evaluation can be found at this link:
http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/documents/research-my-world.pdf

Excellence in Research for Australia - ERA 2012 outcomes

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) results are imminent but there has been no official word on when the results will be announced. The "Towards Research Excellence Summit" is scheduled for Thursday and Friday this week in Melbourne with the CEO of the Australian Research Council (ARC), Prof. Aidan Byrne, speaking on Thursday morning; perhaps the results will be announced then. A Thursday announcement has also been mentioned in the AFR: article.

We are all waiting in anticipation to first, find out how well each Australian university performed, and, second to hear whether there is any word on the next round of ERA and whether research impact will form any part of the next assessment.

Excellence in Innovation - Research Impacting Our Nation's Future

"There are compelling stories that need to be told of research impact arising from research at Australian Universities"

The Australian Technology Network (ATN) and the Group of Eight (Go8) universities yesterday released an outcomes report from their Excellence in Innovation for Australia (EIA) - research impact trial. The EIA set out to measure the "innovation dividend" of research conducted by Australian universities and also to be a precursor to a possible companion piece to the current government's research quality assessment program; the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA). The research impact trial showed that it is possible to assess the impact of research outcomes in the wider community, i.e. outside the university sector, and possible to describe a return on investment in terms of benefits to the "end-users" of the research outcomes. This also suggests that it is possible to ultimately link these measurable outcomes to federal funding (as is currently the case for the ERA). The report also details 24 stand-out case studies from the university sector which rated as having either considerable, very considerable or outstanding impact. Some of the fascinating case studies included:

VitroGro®ECM: modern wound care technology helping people with chronic wounds - from researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). VitroGro

A world first plastic automotive mirror – from fundamental research to commercial OEM product - from researchers at the University of South Australia (UniSA) Plastic mirror

The Report can be downloaded here: Excellence in Innovation - Research Impacting Our Nation's Future

NHMRC announce $652m in health research grants

The Health Minister, Tanya Plibersek, today announced outcomes for the following grant schemes: Project Grants, Research Fellowships, Practitioner Fellowships, Career Development Fellowships, Early Career Fellowships, NHMRC-European Union Collaborative Research Grants, Partnership Project Grants, Mental Health Targeted Call for Research Grants, Independent Research Institutes Infrastructure Support Scheme (IRIISS) and Equipment Grants.

The announcement included more than 1100 grants worth a total of $652 million.

http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/grants/outcomes-funding-rounds

Research Block Grants

The Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE) provide Australian universities with over $1.5 billion annually as block grants for research and research training. The grants are provided through a number of performance-based schemes. Research block grants (RBG) are allocated according to performance based formula and are independent of funding for specific research projects, programs, or fellowships.

The schemes are:

• Research Training Scheme (RTS)
• Joint Research Engagement (JRE)
• Research Infrastructure Block Grants(RIBG)
• Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE)

The return on investment per research performance measure (per research income dollar, per completion, per EFTSL and per publication point) are shown in the table below. The SRE also incorporates an excellence index, from the ERA initiative, and a transparent costing measure.

http://www.innovation.gov.au/Research/ResearchBlockGrants/Pages/default.aspx

QS World University Rankings

The QS world university rankings for 2012/2013 have been released. The three South Australian universities were ranked in the following order: Adelaide University 102; UniSA 293; and Flinders University 342.

The highest ranking Australian university was the Australian National University (ANU) at 24.

The university ranked number 1 in the world was Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

http://www.topuniversities.com/