Public Consultation on the Draft ERA 2015 Submission Documents

The Australian Research Council (ARC) is currently seeking public feedback on the Draft ERA 2015 submission documents.

One of several changes being suggested in the new guidelines is the addition of output volume information to the published ratings (Outcome Reporting - see section 4.2.3). This means that for evaluated fields of research the ARC will not only publicly report the ERA rating (5-1) but also the volume of outputs aligned to that rating. In the past rounds of ERA the evaluation has highlighted 'excellence wherever it occurs' meaning that a small university could score an ERA rating '5' in the same field of research as a larger university and these were seen as equivalent. This suggested change to the reporting of outcomes will mean that there will be a grading or stratification within ratings - for example an ERA rating of '5' with only 50 outputs will no longer be seen as equivalent to an ERA rating '5' in the same field with 500 outputs; or, in fact, may also be seen as inferior to an ERA rating '4' with 500 outputs.

Another change noted in the consultation documents (but not specifically highlighted so you have to dig to find it) is the slight change to the 'reassignment exception'. The new "warning" in the business rules document states that "The reassignment exception must not be used to more more than 40% of the apportioned journal articles into a single UoE". This may be an attempt to put a stop to the 'gaming' that some people think is occurring in the sector. This new rule will now mean that in a single field of research at least 60% of the journal articles must be assigned a field of research as stated on the ARC's journal list

The public consultation can be accessed by the following link:

Public Consultation on the Draft ERA 2015 Submission Documents

ERA Washup & Lessons Learnt - Your ERA Submission

On Thursday 26 November I headed over to Sydney for the Collaborative Research Administrators Group (CRAG) forum titled ERA Washup & Lessons Learnt. The event was held at the Stamford Plaza Airport Hotel which was a lovely venue and made it easy to get over and back again for the day. While it was interesting to hear the stories about the blood, sweat and tears that went into some of the ERA submissions of the universities involved - for me the most informative session was presented by Dr Alex Cook from the Australian Research Council (ARC). Alex outlined some the changes that will occur between the 2009 ERA trial and the 2010 full ERA submission. Of course, following the presentation the poor fellow was flooded with questions for a good 20-30 minutes before he was allowed to return to his seat - I think he was well prepared though and did a great job responding to peoples questions and suggestions.

While there were a whole number of changes to the ERA process I think for me these are the most significant:

1. There will be a soft submission that can be checked by the ARC for potential errors before the submission is signed off by the Vice Chancellor - this will allow us an opportunity to fix the submission without requiring the VC to certify multiple times.
2. Field of Research (FoR) codes will be apportioned rather than double and triple counted thus removing "ghost" unit of assessments.
3. There will be exemplar Background Statements available.
4. We will be able to see reports similar to the reports supplied to the Research Evaluation Committees (REC) which will give us a much better idea of what our submission looks like in the REC's eyes - this will also help in producing our Background Statements.

The rest of the presentation mainly talked about data quality issues which are always going to be issues that need sorting out. Also research theme codes are going to be added to every output - this seemed to be a big issue for most of the people in the room. I am not sure that this is such a big issue myself.

In all it was a great chance to hear about other research office's experiences with their submissions and a good chance to network.

Details of the forum and copies of the presentations can be found here: http://www.hes.edu.au/page/conferences---events/era-washup-forum/program---era-washup/