Research support at the University is the internal allocation of Commonwealth Block Grant funds, such as the Institutional Grants Scheme (IGS) and Research Training Scheme (RTS), according to performance measures of research input and output. 

From 2010, the IGS will be replaced by the Joint Research Engagement (JRE) initiative.  This program transforms the IGS in order to encourage greater collaboration between universities and the business and non-government research sectors.  Under the JRE initiative the IGS funding formula will be revised to remove competitive research grant income from the calculations used to allocate this research block grant, thereby rewarding universities which diversify their sources of research income.

Commonwealth Block Grant fund allocations to universities are determined from the data collected from the Higher Education Research Data Collection  (which comprises research income and research publications data submitted by universities each year).