Increasing investment in research affairs in both developed and developing countries has been a major success in the last decade. However, with growing pressure on the public sector budget, funding organizations have instituted formal Research Needs Assessment (RNA) to insure that research resources are allocated in a way that is consistent with the national objectives or specific needs.
So, the RNA has carried out explicitly or implicitly in all organizations or programs through the allocation of research resources to different commodities, regions, disciplines, problems and types of technologies but it received considerable attention formally and scientifically in recent years.
Since universities as organizations are required to diagnosis and priories alternative projects within constrain of limited funding, RNA become a major concern of many universities around the world to prepare a real orientation for their research programs.
In this paper, after a briefly review of the theoretical background, the current situation of RNA at Shahid Beheshti University (National university of Iran) is described and then an alternative scenario for RNA is introduced.