Rewarding impact of research 'unjust', says Australian Research Council head Aidan Byrne ANY incentive payments for performing well on new measures of research impact should not be related to the research quality exercise, Excellence in Research for Australia, says the head of the Australian Research Council, Aidan Byrne. Professor Byrne said he also was wary of attaching too much in the way of reward payments to the ERA or impact because such measures were imprecise. To make significant funding contingent on performance would be unfair, he said.