Results and review
Review

Review is used worldwide for research investment and reinvestment processes.

We are expanding the use of review to become a standard part of all our investment processes.

What is review

Review is defined as a systematic assessment of:

• academic, scientific and technical quality
• fit with national priorities
• delivery (actual and potential) of outcomes of national benefit
• technology transfer.

Reviews can focus on a single or specific set of related contracts or may involve a larger number of contracts in a research area. Reviews will most often be concerned with the performance of a contract and its expectation to deliver.

The reviews that we undertake will be both retrospective (looking back and assessing past performance) and prospective (looking forward and planning the best approach).

Reviews are intended to:

• give us confidence to commence or continue an investment
• isolate issues that are preventing contracts from performing optimally
• ensure research findings will be relevant to end-users and likely to be used
• help us understand the future strategic direction of a particular area of research.

Review formats

We currently do the following reviews:

Multi-contract format:

• domain reviews - assess all investment contracts in an area of investment and provide strategic information for future bidding rounds
• terminating contract reviews - assess the contracts in a portfolio that are due to be completed at the end of the next financial year

Single-contract format:

• reviews of outcome-based investments – governance and expert panel processes
• quality assurance reviews - part of the contract negotiation process introduced in the 2006/07 stable funding environment (SFE)
• reviews of research consortia - governance and expert panel processes
• ad-hoc reviews.

Discussion and vision documents for implementing review are available in the online library.

The public documents from the Foundation domain reviews are available in the on-line library.