Cross-strategy indicators – Tertiary Education Strategy monitoring 2009

6. Research within the tertiary education sector

The research indicators in this report focus mainly on universities, due to issues of data availability. However, other subsectors do have significant research efforts. Around 20 percent of all staff assessed in the 2006 Performance-Based Research Fund quality evaluations were from institutes of technology, wānanga and private training establishments. The focus of these sub-sectors tends to be more on applied research and knowledge transfer, which is poorly covered by established research metrics.

Nature of research undertaken by tertiary education organisations

Around 30 percent of total expenditure on research in New Zealand is made by universities, with an estimated $640 million spent by universities in 2008.

A significant contribution of universities is in the area of ‘basic research’.⁶ Around half of university research expenditure is in this area.

Universities contributed 53 percent of national expenditure on basic research in 2008 and 25 percent of national expenditure on applied research.

Figure 6.1: Research expenditure by type of research and sector

Source: Statistics New Zealand and Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, Research and development survey, 2006 and 2008.

The largest areas of nationally and internationally recognised research activity in New Zealand universities are humanities and law, biological sciences and social sciences.

The Performance-Based Research Fund gives a rating of A or B to staff assessed to have produced research of international or national standing respectively.⁷

The areas with the largest growth in the numbers of top-rated staff from 2003 to 2006 have been health and medicine and business and economics.

Figure 6.2: Full-time equivalent staff rated A or B by PBRF panel in universities

Source: Tertiary Education Commission.
Note: Figures have been restricted to universities to provide comparability across the two evaluation rounds.

Research output and impact

The share of world-indexed publications provides a measure of the overall research output of New Zealand tertiary institutions. This indicator shows an increasing share since 2000 to 2004.

The share of citations provides a measure of recognition of research. This indicator also shows an increasing share since 2001 to 2005.

Figure 6.3: New Zealand tertiary education institution’s share of world-indexed publications and citations 

Source: Thomson Reuters

Academic research impact takes the rate of citations per publication in New Zealand and compares it with the world average within each subject area. An impact of 1.0 is equal to the world average.

New Zealand universities have an impact above the world average in health and medicine. In most subjects the impact has increased, with the exception of social sciences, where there has been a decrease.

Figure 6.4: Academic impact of university research

Source: Thomson Reuters.

Footnotes

6. Refer to page 9 for definitions of type of research.
   
7. The 2006 Performance-Based Research Fund evaluations were a partial round, where people assessed in 2003 could elect to carry over their scores without reassessment. Some of these staff might have been assessed downwards if they had resubmitted. This makes it difficult to judge how much of the increase from 2003 to 2006 reflects a true increase in the number of high-quality researchers.