Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

This section aims to provide answers to the common questions users have on the website. The answers are provided to facilitate your website experience. 

1.      Why was the Tracker paywalled?

The paywall ensures sustainability and protects the integrity of our research, which is often republished elsewhere. It allows us to keep refining, updating and expanding the Tracker, including by incorporating data further down the technology lifecycle (e.g. intellectual property date).

2.      Do you offer demos or free trials?

Currently, we are only offering demos to customers interested in the unlimited licence tier or with custom requirements. If this suits you, please reach out to us via sales@aspi.org.au with any requirements you have for a demo. We have also made three technologies available for free to get a sense and feel of the Tracker. You can check them out here: smartmaterials, supercapacitors, and mesh and infrastructure independent networks.

3.      What’s coming in future updates?

Beginning in 2026, ASPI will provide regular updates based on subscriber. Our current roadmap is:

• In March, we will incorporate 2025 data across the country and institution rankings, as well as the talent flow.
• In June, we will refresh the 2025 data, having allowed additional time for the research landscape to stabilise.
• Beyond, with sufficient resourcing, we will expand the Tracker to look at patents and intellectual property, extending the Tracker down the next stage of the technology lifecycle.
• We will also periodically refine our technology search terms to make sure we are capturing new research directions, and to ensure our technology list stays relevant to industry and policymakers.

4.      Can I compare countries?

Yes. Select a country in the “Select country” dropdown field, then choose another in “Country (optional)” dropdown field to compare them.

5.      Can I group countries together?

Yes. You can use preset groups (e.g., EU, AUKUS, NATO) or create your own (up to 5 countries per group). To create a custom group:

• Click “Select country or region” and add your first country.
• Click “+” to add more countries.
• Repeat these steps for “Country (optional)” to compare two groups.

6.      What’s the difference between the percentage and number time-series graphs?

The percentage graph shows the volume of country or institution publications as a share of the global total.

Global research output has been growing exponentially since the beginning of scientific publishing in the late 17th century. Therefore, plotting the number of papers produced by a particular country in a particular field potentially emphasises this overall exponential growth rather than relative country performance. The percentage graph accounts for this, making it easier to compare country performance in earlier years, when global research output may have been smaller.

The cumulative global share of publications is calculated by dividing the cumulative sum of high-impact publications for each individual country or institution by the cumulative sum of the global number of high-impact publications. Thus, the cumulative global share represents, at each point in time, the proportion of high-impact publications that the country or institution has accumulated compared to the world’s high-impact publications since 2005.

7.      What is the all technologies overview?

The all technologies overview provides an at-a-glance view of the general situation across in critical technologies research. On this page, we have aggregated the publication datasets across all technologies, removing any duplicate publications that exist within multiple individual technology datasets.

8.      What does 'weighted data' mean in the all technologies overview?

(Note: the toggle feature isn't live on the public website yet, but will be before January 2026)

Because publication volumes differ significantly across technologies, simply aggregating results from different technologies can skew the final result towards the technologies with larger dataset sizes. In the current view, each technology is weighted equally in the final result. A 'weighted data' toggle will be available and enable users to switch between weighing technologies equally regardless of the relative number of research publications, or using the raw dataset and allowing for the fact that some technologies will have a much greater influence on the results than others.