The image problem facing zip-off trousers and other university research

Research output at Australian universities has risen by 579 per cent since 2000, new analysis shows, raising concerns about the usefulness of the tidal wave of papers.

A quarter of papers produced in 2020 received three citations or reads in the following five years; half of Australian research from 2020 was cited only five times, or once a year, in the following five years, the research from University of Melbourne Professor Matthew Pinnuck shows.

“Citations are not a perfect measure of value. But these figures strongly suggest that a substantial proportion of university research has little reach and limited social or academic impact,” Pinnuck said.

Among the topics investigated over the past 25 years is academic analysis of Game of Thrones character Qyburn, the “image problem” facing zip-off trousers and other sustainable fashion (an overemphasis on practicality at the expense of attractiveness) and the relative grumpiness of IT project managers (dependent on years of experience).

Research in Australia is at a crossroads. The nation used research to develop world-leading, life-changing inventions such as Wi-Fi, the cochlear implant and the cervical cancer vaccination. But research and development has bottomed out, and the explosion of new papers comes despite Australia spending less than the OECD average on research as a percentage of GDP.

Pinnuck’s work asks whether Australia’s universities are producing too much research.

Grant schemes through organisations such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) – which last week committed to a slimmed-down process, with fewer administrative burdens – and the National Health and Medical Research Council are funded by the taxpayer. Student fees and the private sector also fund research at the nation’s universities.

Universities do not directly measure the cost of research, but analysis of audited financial statements suggests it comes in at about $3 billion a year.

The problem, Pinnuck said, was not a lack of funding but the large-scale production of research that goes nowhere.

“There is a real lack of accountability – there’s no measurement as to whether [papers] are being read,” he said.

A record level of domestic students since the pandemic has led to an explosion of teaching and research staff.

“The standard university model is to employ more teaching and research staff [to meet the student demand]. The job requirement is to produce research and teach, but the crux is, while enrolments might signal a demand for teaching, it does not follow that there is an increased demand for research,” Pinnuck said.

“AI [and other technological developments] have made it easy to produce a large volume of research – it’s low cost and easy – regardless of whether there is any demand for that research.”

The University of Sydney produced 9917 papers in 2025 (compared with 1873 papers in 2000), while the University of NSW produced 8990 papers in 2025 and 1419 papers in 2000.

“If universities are spending large amounts of public money on research, they should be expected to report not just how much they produce, but whether anyone is reading it, using it or benefiting from it,” Pinnuck said.

The so-called “publish or perish” mentality in academia – by which promotion is informed by how many academic papers a person has produced – has also contributed to the glut, Pinnuck said.

“Internally, there will be attempts made to assess whether that research has had any impact, but it’s very difficult to measure. Across planet Earth, the average level of impact is going down because academics all face this and there are so many publications now.”

Federal opposition education spokesman Julian Leeser said that how we measured research performance and academic incentives had to be considered closely.

“I’m in favour of research and against waste,” Leeser said. “Our system should support research value ahead of research volume and be aligned with our national priorities. And we need to get the incentives right for our academics, so that research obligations don’t detract from excellence in teaching, and vice versa.”

ARC chief executive Ute Roessner said in a statement that research cannot be measured “through a single metric”.

“While citations and readership can provide useful insights, they do not tell the whole story of how research benefits Australia,” she said.

“Many of the discoveries, technologies and policy advances that Australians rely on today began as early-stage research whose ultimate value was not known when the work first commenced.

“Australia’s leadership in fields such as quantum technologies, advances in agricultural productivity, and research that has informed public policy reforms demonstrate how the benefits of research often emerge over many years and extend well beyond publication metrics.”

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