You must continue to:

(a)  be based in New Zealand, and

(b)  grant bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees, or doctoral degrees,

(c)   have an Investment Plan, and 

(d)  receive Student Achievement Component Funding.

(a)  You must participate in each of the Quality Evaluation (QE), Research Degree Completions (RDC), and External Research Income (ERI) components of PBRF, even if your PBRF Funding entitlement for one or more of those components is zero, or is likely to be zero.

(b)  You must have participated in the latest QE in order to receive PBRF Funding through each of the RDC component and the ERI component of such Funding.  

You must provide an Evidence Portfolio for each staff member at your organisation that is eligible for evaluation in the QE, that:

(a)  sets out information on the eligible staff member's research performance, and

(b)  comprises a research output component and a research contribution component.

You must ensure that each staff member whose Evidence Portfolio is included in the QE process:

(a)  is employed by you on the staff census date under a contract of salaried employment with a duration of at least one year, and

(b)  is employed at a minimum of 0.2 full time equivalent (FTE) during the period of the contract of salaried employment, and

(c)   is required to make a substantive contribution to research and/or teaching degree-level programmes as part of his or her employment function (in accordance with the criteria specified in paragraph 3, page 17 of the PBRF Guidelines for tertiary education organisations participating in the 2018 Quality Evaluation (PDF 2.3 MB) (PDF, 2.8 Mb),  

(d)  is not based overseas (in accordance with the criteria specified on page 16 of the PBRF Guidelines for tertiary education organisations participating in the 2018 Quality Evaluation (PDF 2.3 MB) (PDF, 2.8 Mb).

For the avoidance of doubt, you must not submit an Evidence Portfolio for a staff member that does not meet the above eligibility criteria.

You must:

(a)  indicate when an Evidence Portfolio is being submitted in respect of an eligible staff member who is a new and emerging researcher, and

(b)  if you consider that an Evidence Portfolio is likely to be assigned a quality category of R or R(NE), you must not submit that Evidence Portfolio.

You must calculate completions of research-based postgraduate degrees in units of equivalent full time student (EFTS), where one (1.0) EFTS unit is the student workload that would normally be carried out by a student enrolled full-time in a single academic year.

You must, where applicable, report your eligible external research income (ERI) to us, broken down into the following sources:

(a)  New Zealand government contestable funds, and

(b)  New Zealand public sector contract research, and

(c)   New Zealand non-government sources, and

(d)  overseas research income.

For the purposes of this Condition, “external research income” includes income from public and private sources for research conducted by an eligible TEO (and/or a wholly owned subsidiary) and includes research income from competitive sources from within Vote Tertiary Education (excluding PBRF).

You must provide any information required to support the reporting of average quality scores from the QE.

If you receive PBRF Funding that is greater than it should have been, or that you were not entitled to receive, you must treat the amount of the over-funding as a debt due to the Crown that:

(a)  is repayable on demand, and

(b)  may be set-off against all or any funding, or any sum of money payable by us to you.

For the purposes of these PBRF Fund-specific Conditions, the following terms have the following meanings:

Research is original investigation undertaken in order to contribute to knowledge and understanding and, in the case of some disciplines, cultural innovation or aesthetic refinement.  It typically involves enquiry of an experimental or critical nature driven by hypotheses or intellectual positions capable of rigorous assessment by experts in a given discipline.  It is an independent, creative, cumulative and often long-term activity conducted by people with specialist knowledge about the theories, methods and information concerning their field of enquiry.  Its findings must be open to scrutiny and formal evaluation by others in the field, and this may be achieved through publication or public presentation.  In some disciplines, the investigation and its results may be embodied in the form of artistic works, designs or performances.  Research includes contribution to the intellectual infrastructure of subjects and disciples (eg dictionaries and scholarly editions).  It also includes the experimental development of design or construction solutions, as well as investigation that leads to new or substantially improved materials, devices, products or processes.

Excellence as a researcher includes all of the following activities:

(a)  the production and creation of leading-edge knowledge

(b)  the application of that knowledge

(c)   the dissemination of that knowledge to students, industry, iwi and hapū, and the wider community, and

(d)  supporting current and potential colleagues (eg postgraduate students) in the creation, application and dissemination of knowledge.

Excellence will be measured by a combination of external peer review, research degree completion and external research income indicators.

Quality Evaluation and QE mean a periodic peer assessment of the research contribution of individual teaching and research staff in participating TEOs.

Research Degree Completions and RDC mean a measure of the number of research-based postgraduate degrees that are completed within participating TEOs.

External Research Income and ERI mean a measure of income received by participating TEOs (and/or any wholly-owned subsidiaries) for the purposes of conducting research.

Category R represents a quantum of research activity and quality at a level which is insufficient for recognition for funding purposes according to the QE process categories used by us to categorise the quality of Evidence Portfolios.

Category R(NE) represents a quantum of research and quality by a new and emerging researcher at a level which is insufficient for recognition for funding purposes according to the QE process categories used by us to categorise the quality of Evidence Portfolios.