For the last seven years, Linda Butler has been a research Fellow and head of the Research Evaluation and Policy Project (REPP) at the Australian National University.  She is a leading authority on bibliometric analysis, and has been engaged in the theoretical and empirical study of research evaluation for nearly 20 years.  Her findings on the effects of using publication counts to determine the distribution of research funding to universities have had significant public policy impact.

With the impending introduction of the Research Quality Framework (RQF) by the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), which will change the way research funding is distributed to universities, Ms Butler’s research on quantitative indicators has become of critical importance.  She was appointed to chair DEST’s working group on quality metrics in 2006, and has subsequently been contracted by the Department to continue advising on quality metrics through 2007 and 2008 as the RQF is developed and implemented.  Since 2004, Ms Butler has been a member of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) working group on Measures of Research Impact and Achievement (MORIA).  This group was established by the NHMRC’s Research Committee to devise measures of research impact and achievement that can be applied across its funding portfolio, covering commercialisation and health gains in addition to knowledge creation.

Research interests include assessing quantitative measures of research performance, with a particular interest in measures for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences; using bibliometric techniques to map the organisational structure of Australia's research landscape, and analyse its relative strengths and weaknesses; and the assessment of the impact of research in the broader community, outside academia.