SCIENCE POLICY

Executive summary

A benchmarking methodology for assessing emerging areas of science and technology in Australia has been piloted by assessing Australia's capability in nanotechnology. The methodology includes:

  • developing a comprehensive list of keywords related to the field;
  • performing a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the field;
  • comprehensive peer review to validate the keywords and the findings from the bibliometric analysis.

The bibliometric analysis found that Australia produced 1.41 per cent of the world's nanotechnology publications from 1980-2003 and 1.49 per cent from 1998-2003. This is lower than for science as a whole, where Australia produced 2.0-2.4 per cent of the world's science publications between 1990-99 (see Section 3.2.3). The number of Australian nanotechnology publications has increased fairly steadily each year since 'taking off' around 1990 (see Figure 1).

A citation analysis of Australian nanotechnology publications indicates that Australian nanotechnology papers are being published in relatively high impact journals, and are receiving a higher than average citation rate in those journals (see Section 3.2.4).

The percentage of world science publications relating to nanotechnology has been increasing linearly since 1990, indicating that nanotechnology is rapidly becoming an important area of research throughout the world. The percentage of Australian science publications that contain nanotechnology is also increasing, indicating that nanotechnology is becoming an important area of research in Australia. However, it appears that this increase is less rapid than for the world as a whole. Australia's share of world nanotechnology publications peaked in the mid to late 1990s but has decreased slightly since then, suggesting that while Australia's nanotechnology capability is increasing, we have not been keeping pace with the rest of the world in the past 5 years (see Figure 2). From an analysis of the publication outputs of leading nanotechnology countries', nanotechnology appears to be a smaller sector of science in Australia compared with all the other leading nations or regions (see Section 3.2.5, Figure 6).

The percentage of Australian nanotechnology publications with international collaboration has been generally increasing since 1990. Australian nanotechnology publications have a higher level of international collaboration than for Australian science as a whole. The rate of collaboration with Asia is increasing, increasing slightly with Europe, steady with North America, and declining with England (see Section 3.2.6, Figures 7 and 8). Australia appears to have at least some collaboration with most of the world's leading nanotechnology research institutions (see Section 3.2.7, Table 1).

Australia's publication outputs are consistent across the major nanotechnology sub-fields and key topics, indicating a broad level of expertise in all areas of nanotechnology (see Sections 3.2.8 and 3.2.9). Australia ranks 7th in the world (excluding the USA) in US nanotechnology patents, based on a number of different ranking criteria, not just absolute number of nanotechnology patents (where we rank 9th)
(see Section 3.3).

Australia has no formal national nanotechnology initiative, although an informal network is currently in the process of developing a formal structure. Other countries have formal national nanotechnology initiatives that not only pour (in some cases) large amounts of money into nanotechnology R&D, but also serve to focus and direct the national effort. Australia risks falling behind if a similar organisation is not set up here. However, there is significant government investment in Australian nanotechnology research from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), plus funding from state governments. Various ARC-funded nanotechnology projects that commenced in 2002 and 2003 have been allocated a total of A$53,013,909 over their project lives (see Section 3.4).

The benchmarking results were 'peer reviewed' by sending preliminary results to leading Australian nanotechnology researchers for comment, along with a survey aimed at identifying world-leading researchers in the field, who subsequently were also surveyed. While the size of the sample was small, the survey confirmed that Australia has a small number of 'world leaders' in nanotechnology, but in some sub-fields the international researchers found it difficult to name Australian researchers. This is consistent with the bibliometric result that Australia's involvement in nanotechnology is not keeping up with the rest of the world (see Section 3.6).

In summary, the study has found that Australian nanotechnology researchers are producing high quality work across all areas of nanotechnology, but there is evidence that we are not advancing our capabilities as quickly as the rest of the world. The findings also suggest that Australia may fall further behind in the future unless nanotechnology is maintained as a national research priority and funded accordingly. It is recommended that Australia's nanotechnology research performance be regularly evaluated using the methodology established in this study.

The benchmarking methodology used in this project is suitable for assessing other emerging areas of science and technology in Australia, such as biotechnology, bioinformatics, complex systems, ICT, genomics/phenomics, quantum computing and photonics.

Acknowledgements

The Australian Academy of Science would like to acknowledge that this project was made possible by funding from the Australian Research Council under their Learned Academies Special Projects grant scheme. The need for a project of this kind was identified by Dr Michael Barber (FAA, Secretary Science Policy, Australian Academy of Science), who developed the project proposal and drove the early stages
of the project. We are also grateful for the significant input from the expert steering committee, consisting
of Professor Bruce McKellar, FAA (Chair), Professor Frank Caruso, Professor Bob Clark, FAA, Dr Bruce Cornell, Associate Professor Andrew Dzurak, Professor Chennupati Jagadish and Professor Paul McCormick, FAA. We would also like to thank Linda Butler (Research Evaluation and Policy Project, Research School of Social Sciences, ANU) for providing data and expert advice on the
bibliometric analysis.