3 RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT (R&D) STATISTICS

3.1 RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT, BUSINESSES, AUSTRALIA, 2005-06
3.2 THE REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN STANDARD RESEARCH CLASSIFICATION (ASRC 1998)

3.1 RESEARCH AND EXPERIMENTAL DEVELOPMENT, BUSINESSES, AUSTRALIA, 2005-06

The publication Research and Experimental Development, Businesses, Australia, 2005-06 (cat. no. 8104.0) is scheduled for release in August 2007. It contains details of expenditure on, and human resources devoted to, R&D by businesses in Australia. Data are cross-classified by industry, type of expenditure, source of funds, type of employee, business employment size, research field, socioeconomic objective and location.

The 2005-06 publication will include, for the first time, details of business expenditure on R&D by the Agriculture, forestry and fishing industry. It will also be the first fully electronic R&D release (i.e. released in HTML format rather than hardcopy and PDF). In addition to the survey publication, users of R&D statistics will be able to download an extensive range of R&D timeseries data in spreadsheet format from the ABS website free of charge.

If you wish to know more about R&D statistics, please contact Kirsty Rothenbury on (08) 9360 5382.

3.2 THE REVISION OF THE AUSTRALIAN STANDARD RESEARCH CLASSIFICATION (ASRC 1998)

The ABS is currently undertaking a review of the ASRC after a period of 10 years. The research classification is used by the ABS to collect and publish nationwide R&D statistics and by a range of other organisations for analytical, comparative, policy development and other purposes.

The ASRC revision reference committee met in April 2007 to provide the ABS review team with information about their requirements in terms of the classification. The reference committee also provided valuable comments on the ABS concept paper developed to guide the revision process.

Many other R&D stakeholders were also widely consulted to identify limitations of the current classification. Subsequently, subject matter experts have been chosen to revise specific sections of the classification in consultation with fellow professionals. These expert coordinators are expected to send revised lists of classification categories to the ABS by mid June 2007.The ABS is also working with Statistics New Zealand to possibly develop a combined classification to serve the needs of both countries. The revised classification, tentatively named Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) 2008, is expected to be published in March 2008.