By Mary Mulcahy

Just as regular health checks are important to make sure we are fit and healthy, it’s also important for organisations – particularly scientific ones – to have regular health checks.

We regularly assess the performance of our research activities and produce a ‘science health report’ for the organisation. Today we published our 2011-12 report and thankfully, it shows that we are in good health!

The full report is available for download, but here’s a quick summary of the findings:

Our research is highly connected with that of other Australian research institutions, especially the Australian Group of Eight universities. We collaborate on research with most Australian universities and a vast number of international universities and agencies.

We’re in the top 10 global organisations in three out of 22 scientific fields for the breadth of scientific output. This makes us the only Australian institution at this level of recognition, for any scientific discipline area, which means we’re up there with the likes of Yale University, University of California (Davis), Oxford University and University of Wageningen in the Netherlands.

CSIRO is also in the top one per cent of global institutions for 14 scientific discipline fields (based on peer citation of our papers), and we produce a significant proportion of Australia’s research papers in key knowledge areas for the Australian economy. These include Agricultural Sciences (21% of Australian publications involve CSIRO authorship), Space Science (17%), Environment/Ecology (17%), Geosciences (15%) and Plant & Animal Sciences (14%).

Our organisation is also a significant producer of Australian Intellectual Property.We have a strong output of registered intellectual property in the technology fields of Measurement, Biotechnology, Materials (metallurgy) and Computer Technology. In fact, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has ranked us eighteenth overall within the global environment and research sector for output of registered intellectual property.

CSIRO’s position in the innovation system is at the interface of academia, government and industry. The report suggests that we’re well connected to all these parts of the system at the domestic and international level.

What great news!

To learn more about the benchmarking of Australian research, see the recent reports released by the Chief Scientist of Australia and DIISRTE.