About 16% of Australia's research effort is devoted to medical research, and yet medical researchers produce almost half of Australia's research publications.' Medical research has until recently done much better than non-medical research in increasing its funding in the past 10 years, and government funding of medical research more than doubled in real terms between 1980 and 1988.' This was a faster rate of growth than in any other country in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.' Yet in 1988, a recent Australian study shows, the Australian government was still spending a smaller proportion of its gross domestic product (0-02%) on medical research than was Britain (0 03%) or the United States (0-13%) (table I). These international comparisons are difficult and must be treated cautiously, but the Australian study also shows that roughly two thirds of the funds for medical research in Australia come from the government compared with about one third in Britain (table II). The box describes the peer review system of the Medical Research Committee (MRC), which is distinguished by its openness and by the interaction among reviewers and applicants-two features advocated by the British Advisory Board for the Research Councils in a recent report on peer review.' The MRC does not actually employ anybody and has a policy of investing most of its funds in research initiated by the investigator. Over half is spent on project grants and 10%/, on programme grants. A fifth is spent on institutes, and this, from the point of view of the committee, is money well spent-because, as the next article will describe, less than half of the income of the institutes comes from the MRC; most is raised elsewhere. Furthermore, none of the MRC's funds are spent on administration: the Department of Health and Community Services picks up the tab for this. The Australian MRC is thus proud that, unlike the British Medical Research TABLE I-Percentage of gross domnestic produict spetz annually on medical research by governments in selected developed counties, 1980-8
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.