NHMRC research measures up, says report

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) has released Measuring Up 2013 - a report which analyses and compares the publication output of NHMRC health and medical research funding with other Australian research.

Performance was measured by the number of journal publications generated by research and the number of times those publications were cited by other researchers. The report found that NHMRC-funded research significantly outperformed other Australian health and medical research between 2005 and 2009.

“The data show that Australia’s health and medical research overall, and NHMRC-supported research in particular, perform strongly compared to international benchmarks,” said NHMRC CEO Professor Warwick Anderson.

“Although citations and publications are not the only measure of quality, the report shows that, on average, NHMRC-funded research receives more attention from other researchers than non-NHMRC-funded research.”

According to the report:

• 20,960 NHMRC-supported publications accounted for about 31% of all Australian health and medical research output in 2005-2009, up from 26% in 2002-2006.
• The number of health and medical research publications that have NHMRC support was 68% higher in 2005-2009 than in 2002-2006, whereas the total Australian health and medical research publications increased by 44% during the same period.
• NHMRC-supported publications received 60% more citations than the world average. The average citation rate for Australian health and medical research publications was 17% above the world average.
• In all fields and subfields, NHMRC-supported publications had a relative citation impact above that of other Australian health and medical research publications that were not supported by NHMRC funding.
• Of all NHMRC-supported publications, 2.8% were in the top 1% of the most cited health and medical research publications in the world. Australia as a whole contributed 1.8% to the top percentile.
• Australia had 1214 papers in the top 1% most cited papers in the world; almost half of those had NHMRC support.
• Nearly 40% of NHMRC-supported publications involved international collaborations.

NHMRC supports research through a diverse range of funding schemes targeting individual researchers, different types of research groups, specific projects and particular fields of study.

The report can be viewed here.