Download The

OUTLOOK ASSESSING SCIENCE Lessons from Australia and New Zealand © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved OUTLOOK ASSESSING SCIENCE 24 July 2014 / Vol 511 / Issue No 7510 OUTLOOK ociety benefits enormously from scientific research. We ASSESSING CONTENTS SCIENCE get new technologies, live longer and healthier lives, and gain deeper knowledge of our planet and the Universe. SThe issue of how to evaluate the fruits of research confronts S52 SCIENCE BUDGET scientists and policy-makers all over the world. Every country Funding by numbers has its own set of circumstances surrounding its research Australia and New Zealand’s different infrastructure, wealth, and economic, environmental and approaches to financing research Lessons from Australia and New Zealand developmental objectives — so there is no universal solution. S57 RESEARCH METRICS Cover art: Dale Edwin Murray Earlier this year, at a symposium organized by Nature in Calling science to account Melbourne, Australia, a group of leading academics, funders A Nature symposium in Melbourne Editorial initiated debate on research outcomes Herb Brody, Michelle and government advisers discussed how research outcomes Grayson, Stephen are measured (see page S57). This Outlook supplement was S64 RESEARCH ASSESSMENT Pincock, Kathryn influenced by these debates, although we at Nature take sole The limits of excellence Miller, Rebecca responsibility for its content. Measuring academic output has Dargie, Afsaneh Gray As discussed at the symposium, both Australia and New benefits and drawbacks Art & Design — Wesley Fernandes, Zealand have research assessment programmes that place S67 PERSPECTIVE Mohamed Ashour, heavy emphasis on research excellence (S52) — a qualitative On the verge of a new ERA Alisdair Macdonald, determination that is heavily informed by quantitative Margaret Sheil helped devise and Andrea Duffy metrics concerning, for instance, how often a paper is cited implement Australia’s research Production evaluation framework Karl Smart, Susan (S64). Both Australia (S67) and New Zealand (S82) have Gray, Ian Pope, seen their global scientific standings rise in recent years — S72 RESEARCH IMPACT Robert Sullivan, attributable at least in part to their assessment systems, even Income for outcome Chris Gilloch though Australia’s system offers little financial reward (S81). Governments want value for money Advertising Measuring research using academic yardsticks largely when funding science research Kylie Ahern, Kate Aylett ignores the wider impacts of research such as new policies S77 PERSPECTIVE Powering up citations Marketing or improved technologies. Academics and policymakers in Alan Finkel offers a way to make Hannah Phipps both countries are considering the benefits and difficulties patents and PhD supervision equivalent Project Manager of trying to measure such impact (S72). Could the creation to citations for research appraisal Anastasia Panoutsou of ‘citation equivalents’ enable comparison of non-academic Art Director work against peer-reviewed literature (S77)? S81 PERSPECTIVE If not funding then teaching Kelly Buckheit Krause We hope that the intense focus on these issues in Australia Publisher Brian Schmidt unpicks the financial Richard Hughes and New Zealand will inform and stimulate this crucial questions surrounding the Excellence Magazine Editor debate throughout the scientific world. in Research for Australia system Rosie Mestel S82 Q&A Editor-in-Chief Philip Campbell, Editor-in-Chief, Nature Individual approach Philip Campbell Michelle Grayson, Senior Editor, Supplements Jane Harding balances the pros and cons of New Zealand’s system and its focus on individual researchers Nature Outlooks are sponsored supplements that aim to stimulate All featured articles will be freely available for 6 months. interest and debate around a subject of interest to the sponsor, SUBSCRIPTIONS AND CUSTOMER SERVICES while satisfying the editorial values of Nature and our readers’ For UK/Europe (excluding Japan): Nature Publishing Group, expectations. The boundaries of sponsor involvement are clearly Subscriptions, Brunel Road, Basingstoke, Hants, RG21 6XS, UK. delineated in the Nature Outlook Editorial guidelines available at Tel: +44 (0) 1256 329242. Subscriptions and customer services for go.nature.com/e4dwzw Americas — including Canada, Latin America and the Caribbean: CITING THE OUTLOOK Nature Publishing Group, 75 Varick St, 9th floor, New York, NY Cite as a supplement to Nature, for example, Nature Vol. XXX, 10013-1917, USA. Tel: +1 866 363 7860 (US/Canada) or +1 212 726 No. XXXX Suppl., Sxx–Sxx (2014). 9223 (outside US/Canada). Japan/China/Korea: Nature Publishing VISIT THE OUTLOOK ONLINE Group — Asia-Pacific, Chiyoda Building 5-6th Floor, 2-37 Ichigaya The Nature Outlook Assessing Science supplement can be found at Tamachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-0843, Japan. Tel: +81 3 3267 8751. http://www.nature.com/nature/outlook/assessingscience CUSTOMER SERVICES It features all newly commissioned content as well as a selection of [email protected] relevant previously published material. Copyright © 2014 Nature Publishing Group 24 JULY 2014 | VOL 511 | NATURE | S49 © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE THE VIEW FROM INSIDE A MICROSCOPE onash University has built the microscope of the 21st century, Ma cinematic virtual reality environment that gives researchers a new spatial awareness of their subjects. Dubbed CAVE2™, it comprises a curved room with 80 high-definition LCD screens projecting 3D images that allow a viewer, when wearing special “tracked” control glasses, to not only see their subject but also to manipulate and walk through and around it. “This opens up new possibilities for insight and discoveries across a range of sciences,” says Professor Paul Bonnington, director of the Monash eResearch Centre CAVE2 at Monash University displaying brain white matter data courtesy of UIC. (MeRC), who has overseen the develop- Photo: Paul Jones ment of CAVE2 at Monash University’s Clayton campus in Melbourne. advanced imaging facilities, that has The “focusing” components of the tradi- For example, the brain’s white matter made it into the modern microscope. tional microscope are replaced by com- viewed up close in CAVE2 can provide bio- putational tools that transform and filter medical researchers with new insights into MORE THAN THE VIEWFINDER the data sample to extract features. These disease—especially when they are able to A microscope viewfinder makes a are provided by a purpose-built interac- compare diseased and healthy samples. good analogy for CAVE2, according to tive supercomputer installed at Monash Senior research fellow and CAVE2 Professor Bonnington. At the centre University called the Multi-modal Australian platform manager Dr David Barnes of scientific discovery for hundreds of Sciences Imaging and Visualisation explains: “If you looked at this on a years, a microscope has three key com- Environment, also known as MASSIVE. desktop display it would basically look ponents: at the bottom, a light source to The Centre also developed their own like a bundle of wool. You don’t ap- illuminate a sample; in the middle, the data transport, management and storage preciate the space and gaps between focusing dials; and at the top, an eyepiece software called MyTardis, which takes the the circuitry and its 3D structure, but for viewing. huge amount of data from the bottom CAVE2 lets researchers see the actual “Five years ago we set out saying, ‘sci- instrument layer of the “microscope” and structural differences.” entific discovery is still going to depend places it into MASSIVE. The technology behind CAVE2 was on this concept, but we need a modern Finally, the modern-day “viewfinder” is developed by the Electronic Visualization equivalent’,” he says. a powerful viewing lens—CAVE2 itself— Laboratory at the University of Illinois In his 21st century version, the “light which can reveal features, details and a at Chicago in the US, and their experts source” is the imaging technology that perspective never before possible. helped install it in Melbourne, where it’s provides the sample. It could be instru- been operating since November 2013. ments like the Australian Synchrotron, a SEEING WHAT WE’RE MADE OF But it’s the additional work by Monash magnetic resonance imaging scanner or These possibilities include building IMAGES: UCSD CALIT2, UIC EVL & PAUL JONES PAUL & EVL UIC CALIT2, UCSD IMAGES: University, integrating CAVE2 with other a next-generation DNA sequencer. further on the Human Genome Project to Advertiser retains sole responsibility for content ADVERTISEMENT FEATURE examine the finer details of the human Mars that has been reconstructed from a virtual finished building and experi- proteome, the complete set of proteins images originally taken by the NASA ence what it will look, feel and even expressed by our genes. rover Curiosity. sound like. “Mapping the human genome was As with the biomedical images, see- More than just a “wow factor”, this really just prep for where the research is ing the planet’s features at scale and lets engineers test the impact of design going, and that is to understand, not just looking real enough to touch gives choices on noise level and identify the building blocks, but how they func- new insight for researchers. “You can conflicts with plumbing or electricity tion,” explains Professor Bonnington. deduce a lot more from this perspective,” conduits, avoiding costly revisions later. The Human

Load more