SCIENCE POLICY

Adapting the cosepup methodology to suit the Australian context

The COSEPUP methodology

The Committee on Science, Engineering and Public Policy (COSEPUP) was interested in evaluating how the US is performing relative to the following two goals:

  1. The US should be among the world leaders in all major areas of science, and
  2. The US should maintain clear leadership in some major areas of science.

They chose to evaluate this through 'the establishment of independent panels consisting of researchers who work in a field, individuals who work in closely related fields, and research users who follow the field closely. Some of these individuals should be outstanding foreign scientists in the field being examined.'

This 'international benchmarking' technique was then applied to assessing three fields – mathematics, immunology, and materials science and engineering.

For each field, an oversight group was set up and asked to define sub-fields and select an expert panel to carry out the benchmarking assessments. The expert panels were then charged to answer the following three questions:

  1. What is the position of US research in the field relative to that in other regions or countries?
  2. On the basis of current trends in the US and worldwide, what will be the relative position of the US in the near and longer-term future?
  3. What are the key factors influencing relative US performance in the field?

All of the expert panels chose to augment conventional performance indicators (such as bibliometric analysis, R&D investment, numbers of scientists/graduates etc) with a novel technique they termed the 'Virtual Congress'. This method sought to identify the world leaders in a sub-field by asking researchers to imagine they were the organiser of an international conference in their sub-field, and then to list who they would ideally invite to speak at such a conference. The expert panels then considered the results of the various performance indicators and made conclusions in response to the three questions above.

The Australian context

For the purposes of this project it is necessary to modify the COSEPUP approach, for the following reasons:

  • We are dealing with an emerging field of science – nanotechnology – whereas the COSEPUP studies dealt with established fields. Hence conventional performance indicators may not adequately capture performance in nanotechnology;
  • The US’s goals of being amongst the world leaders in all areas of science and to maintain clear world leadership in some areas of science are not appropriate for Australia, considering the smaller scale of our R&D budget and the smaller population of our country in general.
  • The current project has tighter budget and time constraints compared with the COSEPUP study, and it is intended that the general benchmarking methodology that will be developed should be able to be implemented with a minimum of resources.

Therefore, the goals of this study should be to explore whether Australia currently has researchers and/or research groups:

  • whose contributions are seen by the rest of the world as contributing to the development of the field;
  • who have links with the major research groups who are seen as the world leaders in nanotechnology, wherever they may be; and
  • who have the requisite background and/or cognate skills and knowledge to enable Australian science and technology to capture international developments for Australia.

In the context of these goals, the three questions asked of the expert panels in the COSEPUP studies are still relevant, namely:

  1. What is the position of Australian research in nanotechnology relative to that in other regions or countries?
  2. On the basis of current trends in Australia and worldwide, what will be the relative position of Australia in nanotechnology in the near and longer-term future?
  3. What are the key factors influencing relative Australian performance in nanotechnology?