The Triennial Higher Education Funding Report identified two key influences on the research agenda and environment, globalisation and the rapid advances in information and communications technologies. Knowledge itself, and how it is created, controlled, disseminated and applied will be a key factor distinguishing the strongest economies and most robust societies in the new millennium. Establishing an innovation culture in Australia which makes the best use of national and international information networks, encourages creativity in all forms of research, promotes collaboration between university researchers and industry and disseminates the outcomes of research to the wider community, is critical to Australia's long term economic growth, job creation and social well-being. The higher education sector's importance is still critical to Australia's research performance. The sector is a particularly significant player in relation to basic research.
Universities also have a unique responsibility in relation to the training of new researchers.
But it is not the only player. University research is changing, with an impact on the creation, publication and distribution of research and scholarly information. In a world in which knowledge is rapidly expanding, universities have made strategic decisions to focus research in particular areas of strength. Increased competition between universities for limited funds and research grants has meant that universities look to their strategic alliances at the national and international level, and look to collaborative research and shared research infrastructure equipment and facilities. There has been an increasing emphasis on teamwork, exposure to industry and the applications dimension of research in research training.