A government report criticised Australian universities for low proficiency in commercialising epistemic production (research and knowledge). A critical omission was a comparable measure of academic productivity to substantiate whether underperformance correlated with the commercialisation value of research output or whether academic productivity and commercialisation activities represented two distinctive outcomes. An analysis of postdoctoral research output between 2011 and 2016 found that productivity within that sub-sector exceeded policy and industry estimates. Policy criticisms highlight the methodological problem of assuming that the commercialisation value of research output represents an equivalent measure of academic productivity.