“Research is the first strand, embracing the systematic generation of new knowledge, development of new ideas and experiment with new techniques. These activities inform student learning and provide an intellectual platform for engaging in knowledge transfer.”[93]
The Research and Research Training Quality Taskforce report of January 2007 sets the blueprint for research at Melbourne over the coming years.[94] It found that 90 per cent of our departments are ranked in the top three in Australia based on research performance, with more than 47 per cent ranked first in Australia. Our international rankings confirm the strong research performance expected from a leading research-intensive university. Whilst the University is committed to improving our overall performance, there is recognition of the need to focus our research investment in targeted areas if we are to continue to be internationally competitive. There is a strong commitment to focusing on crossdisciplinary, inter-institutional and international research. In 2008, as a year in which the University will focus its attention more strongly on research, we will see targeted investment in key research areas such as the Doherty Institute for Immunology and a new centre related to resilient society.
As a world-class university how can we meet the scholarly information needs of outstanding researchers across a broad discipline base? Should areas of research priority be reflected in how funds are allocated to library materials, whether those we collect or those we subscribe to or license as a digital resource? How should our scholarly infrastructure support collaboration across disciplines? Across institutions? Across national boundaries? Between scholars and students?
Integral to maintaining and improving our position in international rankings is our competitiveness in high impact and highly cited research. Recent research shows that citation impact can be increased by publishing scholarly output in digital forms that are searchable through the Internet.[95] This achieves both a material and social end: the opportunity to increase impact whilst also making our research outcomes freely available to the broader community. The final recommendation of the Taskforce was a continued commitment to using online repositories to give greater access and profile to the University’s scholarship. The emerging requirements from research granting bodies, to make available not only the outputs of publicly funded research but the research data itself, pose new opportunities and challenges for the University.
How committed are we as a University to making the outcomes of our research freely available? What level of rigor, if any, do we wish to exert in verifying the quality of what is published on University equipment? What is our commitment to making the underlying research data available to support our research? Our teaching? Our knowledge transfer obligations? Where public access is a mandatory requirement of a research grant, who should take responsibility for meeting this requirement? If the research data is of national or international significance, who will ensure its long-term access and preservation? How will this be funded?
The Taskforce found that many of our researchers do not perceive Melbourne as a major player in the nation’s research and research training infrastructure initiatives.
At a time when research is increasingly collaborative, requiring access to high quality information and communication infrastructure, large datasets, advanced compute capability and high bandwidth networks, Melbourne’s devolved approach[96] arguably works against developing a sense of priority and the pre-requisite core infrastructure and capabilities.
What information infrastructure must we put in place to meet the needs of our researchers across different disciplines for the next decade? For access to, or ownership of, deep collections? For data mining? For access to advanced compute capability and high bandwidth networks?
Our commitment to enhancing the quality of research training remains strong. The Curriculum Commission focused explicitly on pathways into research higher degree programs and the distinctive PhD experience we seek for our students. “The distinctive PhD is premised on the need to provide our doctoral candidates with broader, interdisciplinary knowledge and skills in addition to those highly valued attributes developed by intensive and focused research programs.”[97] The changing environment, requiring superior data mining and information literacy skills, and for most disciplines an understanding of e-research and the skills to operate in an increasingly collaborative, global, digital information environment, presents new challenges for the University. Increasingly diverse ways of publishing, types of publication and changing patterns of peer review make for a complex and rapidly shifting environment.
How do we ensure that our research higher degree students have the skills required to operate in the global information economy? How do we ensure our researchers are aware of new possibilities? New scholarly information sources? New tools? New techniques?
One Comment
I think the devil will be in the detail when it comes to the outcomes of any proposals that might come out of the information futures program.
With regards to specific directions, I think when it comes to curating/maintaining data sets etc, that we should keep in mind that the internet doesn’t tend to encourage/allow single sited data/information. Melbourne University may well ‘house’ certain data sets but that doesn’t necessarily preclude, or make less valid/important, there being available elsewhere. The institution’s status and integrity may be the deciding factor in whether people choose to access it here or elsewhere. (This article may be of interest for understading the values of the network economy http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html
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In regards to the university ensuring the quality of papers given open access, I think quality is better policed at a departmental level, through engagement with researchers and admissions/appointments. I think a centralised system could turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. That said, I think the quality is important, though high profile successes will not be undervalued by a few stray sub-standard papers.