From Nature, 31 October 2018:
Australia’s government is set to introduce a ‘national-interest test’ for research projects seeking grant funding from next year.
The policy will require that researchers outline how their project will advance the country’s interests, said education minister Dan Tehan in a statement released on 31 October. “The value of specific projects may be obvious to the academics who recommend which projects should receive funding, but it is not always obvious to a non-academic,” he said.
The test will apply to future project applications seeking money from the Australian Research Council (ARC), a major funder of research in both the sciences and the humanities. Read more.
Bianca Nogrady 