Please ensure you adhere to these guidelines when delivering your project to FRDC.
Ensuring the quality of scientific information used to manage Australia’s fisheries and marine ecosystems is important in earning the trust of stakeholders and the community in the decision-making process.
These guidelines are intended to apply to all stages of the research process, including research planning processes and the appropriateness of the proposed methodology, to ensure the reliability and objectivity of resulting scientific information.
Research and Science Information Guidelines for Australian Fisheries outlines what constitutes best-practice, high-quality and reliable scientific information.
The quality of research and scientific information relates primarily to relevance, reliability, objectivity and integrity, and the internationally accepted mechanism for evaluating this is peer review.
The Australian guidelines are built around these ‘PRIOR’ principles:
Peer review - the work has been evaluated by one or more experts in the appropriate field.
Reliability- the information is accurate and reproducible.
Integrity – the information is protected from inappropriate alteration, selective interpretation or presentation, including with regard to uncertainty in that information. Scientific information should remain complete throughout the science-to-decision process.
Objectivity – the information presented is impartial and free of personal bias.
Relevance - research and scientific information must be relevant to the fisheries management objectives and associated key questions for the fishery concerned, contributing directly to answering those questions and addressing management objectives for that fishery.
Meeting the requirements of these guidelines will primarily be the responsibility of those who “buy research” (research purchasers) and those who “supply the research” (research providers). These two roles may rest within the single organisation (buying and doing by different areas), or under separate organisations.