ERA 2012 Journal List

With the Australian Research Council (ARC) removing the journal rankings (A*-C) from their ERA journal list there will be an increased focus on citation metrics and specifically the relative citation impact (RCI). In fields of research that did not undergo peer review - ERA ratings were no doubt driven by the RCI values available to the national Research Evaluation Committees (RECs). The RCI is a ratio of the number of citations per paper a particular unit of evaluation has to the expected world citation rate. RCI is most useful because it is discipline and time specific meaning that it takes into account both the fact that different disciplines have different citation trends and that older articles generally have more citations than younger articles. RCIs can be calculated using data available from citation data suppliers such as Elsevier (Scopus) and Thomson Reuters (Web of Science).