Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research: Submission in Response to the Discussion Paper

This submission responds to the Australian Government’s October 2014 discussion paper Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research, which proposed measures to increase industry collaboration and commercialisation from publicly funded research. Research Australia supports better pathways to commercialisation for health and medical research but maintains that commercialisation is only one route to translation and must be balanced against basic and investigator-led research. It recommends a clearer distinction between research funding, aimed at creating knowledge, and innovation funding, aimed at applying it, and proposes milestone-based follow-on funding for proof-of-principle work, noting that National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Development Grants make up less than one per cent of NHMRC funding. Other proposals include giving greater weight to commercial experience in academic recruitment, promotion and competitive grant assessment; interim funding for researchers returning from industry; block grant changes that reward research-industry collaboration, developed with universities and evaluated; reform of research training, including incentives for small and medium enterprises to host postgraduate placements and industry-sponsored scholarships, while protecting training in research methods given concerns about reproducibility; support to help researchers decide whether to patent or publish; linkage of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare Benefits Schedule data with hospital data and state registries; and continued streamlining of clinical trial approval and governance.