Review
Domain reviews

Domain reviews assess all investment contracts in an area of research. The reviews are not restricted to a fund, portfolio or scheme, and the contracts may represent a number of portfolios.

They have two goals:

• to provide an assessment of the performance of the relevant contracts
• to provide recommendations on future investment in the research area.

The component of retrospective performance of current contracts and future research needs are undertaken as a two step process. The domain review format also involves input from users' research.

How they are done

The first step is to prepare a list of contracts to be included in the review.

Evidence portfolio - Furture Strategies/Directions

The evidence portfolio we require is similar to that required for the Tertiary Education Commission’s Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). The evidence portfolio is submitted to the Expert Panel.

We ask for three sections of evidence:

• a research output summary comparable to that requested for PBRF
• a peer-esteem summary, which also takes into account end-user esteem
• evidence of contracted outputs and in the case of recent contracts, progress towards delivery of intermediate outcomes and therefore benefit to New Zealand.

Review steps

Once an evidence portfolio has been compiled, the domain review is undertaken in four steps:

• Expert Panel
  • the expert panel assesses the quality and strength of current contracts in the research area
• Research-User Interaction
  • following the science panel, strategic input is requested from users of the research on the future requirements for New Zealand
• Future Directions submission
  • each research organisation can submit a future directions submission to the Strategic Decision Group
• Strategic Decision Group
  • the Strategic Decision Group then considers the findings from the Science Panel and Research Users, and the strategy and future planning of research organisations.
  • they then provide recommendations on the direction and requirements of continued and future investment (10-15 years) in the research area.

Membership of the Expert Panel and the Strategic Decision Group are chosen by the Foundation?, but research organisations are asked to submit suggestions as nominations.

Upcoming domain reviews

We will be undertaking the following reviews in the next twelve months:

• food domain: in mid 2008 about 25 contracts will be reviewed

On these pages you can find all the information you need if you are involved in the review.

Completed domain reviews

We have recently completed the following domain reviews:

• bioactives domain review (2007)
• water domain review (2007)
• plant biotechnology domain review (2006).

Further details of all completed domain reviews are available in our online library.

For more information

To get an idea of how the Domain review process works please see the following example of terms of reference from the 2007 Water Domain review.