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The Vexed Question of Research Priorities: An Australian Example
Abstract
This paper discusses the nature of the research priorities debate in Australia, and traces the working out of that debate over recent years. The discussion is embedded in an account of how the institutional structure developed to allocate funds for research and how mechanisms were put in place to try to establish national research priorities. It is argued that the prioritising processes developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC) during the 1980s and early 1990s are adaptable enough for current and future use, but that by 1996–7, the possibility of a sustained effort to work out national research priorities appeared remote.
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Notes and References
United States Office of Scientific Research and Development, Science—the Endless Frontier, report by the Director, Vannevar Bush, July 1945, Washington. Reprinted 1980, National Science Foundation, Washington. The quoted words come from Bush's letter of transmission.
Don Aitkin, ‘The Australian Research Grants Committee: an Account of the Way Things Were’, Prometheus, 14, 2, 1996, pp. 179–194.
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam, Toronto, 1988, p. 175.
John Ziman, Science in the steady state: the research system in transition, London, Science Policy Support Group, SPSG Concept Paper 1, 1987.