NIF has finished analysing the results of our recent 2026 NIF User Experience survey. We are grateful for your answers that will help NIF direct its work in future to better serve users.
Your feedback adds a community voice in shaping how NIF evolves, and delivering services that are relevant, accessible and impactful. We need this information to continue to enable high‑quality research across Australia. The evidence is also passed to our funders, the Australian Government Department of Education (who administer NCRIS), to demonstrate the ongoing value of our national research infrastructure for justificatio of continued investment in imaging infrastructure.
Overall, people’s satisfaction with NIF’s support for their research increased to 96% this year, up from 93% last year, and 92% the year before. This encouraging result reflects the work of our Australian experts, who help research succeed.
We are also delighted that 98% of our users “would recommend NIF facilities to a colleague” – something we aim to build on and continue in years to come.
Broad range of respondents; excellent range of outcomes
Open in June for 3 weeks, we had a very positive response to the survey, which we were pleased to see represent many types of NIF’s users.
For instance, there was a robust spread of respondents over various research career paths.
Most of the people responding were recurring users: 89%.
Eighty-four percent of NIF’s users report that NIF is “very” or “extremely” important to their research.
Regarding impacts, NIF users report many outcomes (people could choose more than 1 outcome):
| Outcome enabled by NIF | % of users |
| Publications | 57 |
| Research grant applications | 51 |
| Conference presentations | 51 |
| Promoted academic research/collaboration opportunities | 37 |
| Significant research breakthrough | 35 |
| Research translation | 28 |
| Clinical trials | 21 |
| Industry/private sector engagement | 20 |
| None, yet | 8 |
| Commercialisation | 6 |
| Other* | 7 |
‘Other’ included reported outcomes such as “building Indigenous community relationships and collaborations”, animal welfare, and therapy planning.
We thank all of our users for their time and thoughtfulness to provide us with these valuable insights.
With this information, we will continue to pursue NIF’s strength as a connected, seamless national network that is beyond its instruments – aiming to significantly benefit Australia and Australians’ innovation and health.
We have drawn 5 random responses for the $100 gift cards, and will email those people presently.