ERA 2012

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the Hon Senator Kim Carr, announced on 25 October 2010 that another round of ERA is scheduled for 2012. As information becomes available, ERA Liaison Officers will be notified and the ARC website updated.

ERA 2010 Journal Ranking List

The Australian Research Council (ARC) have now released their ERA 2010 Ranked Journal list (and ranked conference list too - although this one seemed to appear with much less fanfare than the journal list). The Ranked Journal List contains tens of thousands of peer reviewed journal titles covering all manner of fields of research. The list will be used for the upcoming Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. The list provides information about the journal titles including the Field of Research (FOR) code that it covers, whether it is indexed by citation and abstracts database Scopus and most "importantly" a quality ratings of A*-C. The quality rating is roughly A* = top 5% of articles by quality; A = next 15%; B = next 30% and C = bottom 50%. While the list makes the practical task of submitting a higher education provider's research output data to the ARC easier, all nicely bundled into FOR codes and with histograms of quality within those FORs, it is definitely not perfect. The main problem is that while the FOR codes and rank might conveniently describe the journal - they do not always accurately describe the individual articles within the journal. This causes problems when the article within a journal inherits the FOR code classifications and ranking of the journal it is published in.

There has been some mention of the idea that with this rating scale "C" ranked journals may disappear as everyone will publish in the A and A* rated journals. My problem with this idea is that it assumes that all those people who currently publish in C rated journals could have those same articles published in A and A* rated journals - this is unlikely. Also, what if none of their colleagues read the A* and A journals - why would they want to publish their work somewhere that no one will see it? I believe that the increasing interest in "open access" journals will have a much bigger impact on publication behavior and research in general than the ranked list will. I doubt that the academic community will be pushed into publishing only in exclusive and expensive A* and A rated journals that no one can afford or want to read - this would defeat the whole point of them doing research and I just can't imagine this list having such a dramatic impact on them.

http://www.arc.gov.au/era/key_docs10.htm

The Mawson Experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ7oXkK19eI

Implications of ERA 2010

The Australian Research Council (ARC) have now released the ERA 2010 Submission Guidelines for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. Section 1.5 on page 7 of the Guidelines suggest that there will be a number of implications of the ERA outcomes, these include:

1. Reputational Exposure - universities may be ranked at the 2-digit and 4-digit field of research.
2. Funding Implications - the ERA will inform the performance component of the Sustainable Research Excellence (SRE) program.
3. HDR Student Supervision - the ERA may inform Research Block Grant allocations which could include the Research Training Scheme (RTS) which may have an implication for the funding of HDR students.

See below for an excerpt from the 2010 ERA Submission Guidelines:

"1.5. Use of Information from ERA

The ARC will publicly release outcomes of the evaluations for all disciplines at the four- and two-digit level. This information will be published at an institutional and a national level. The ARC will also make available to individual institutions further information on the evaluations of their own disciplines.

ERA will inform the performance component of the Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities Program. The eligibility of institutions for funding from the Sustainable Research Excellence in Universities Program will be contingent on their participation in ERA.

The Government will determine how the allocation of other Research Block Grants may be linked to ERA results in consultation with the higher education sector." - page 7

A copy of the Guidelines can be downloaded at the ARC's website: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/key_docs10.htm

More information on Research Block Grant programs can be found at the DIISR website: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/Research/Pages/ResearchBlockGrants.aspx

ERA 2009 PCE Trial Outcomes - National Report

The Australian Research Council (ARC) have made public the results of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE) Trial at the National level. While there is very little detail available publicly it does seem to suggest that Australia's research quality is above the World average in Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences. On average our best performances appear to be Astronomical and Space Sciences, Macromolecular and Materials Chemistry and Geology. This is very encouraging as these fields of research fit nicely into the Australia Government's National Research Priorities and their associated priority goals.

More information about the ERA Trial and Outcomes can be found here: http://www.arc.gov.au/era/trial.htm#outcomes

More information about Australia's National Research Priorities can be found here: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Section/AboutDIISR/FactSheets/Pages/NationalResearchPrioritiesFactSheet.aspx

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/

ERA 2010 FAQs

The Australian Research council (ARC) have updated their FAQ webpage with the following frequently asked questions. They are set to release their final guidelines for the ERA initiative in December. These FAQs outline some the differences that there will be between the 2009 Trial and 2010 full ERA submission.

What changes will occur from the 2009 ERA Submission Guidelines?
Changes in the ERA 2010 Submission Guidelines will include:

1. Clarification of the researcher eligibility requirements. An additional employment category will be provided to accommodate casual staff.
2. A selection of esteem indicators will be included.
3. There will be ERA Listed Conferences for selected disciplines. This will include ranked and unranked conferences.
4. Institutions will be able to apportion FoRs for research outputs, research income, applied measures and esteem. For Journal Articles and Listed Conferences, apportionment of FoRs will only be possible across the codes to which each journal/conference is assigned.
5. For peer review, institutions will be able to nominate a preferred FoR in which the output should be reviewed.
6. Research Themes will be mandatory for each research output, although a response of ‘not applicable’ will be allowed.
7. Additional applied measures will be included: plant breeder’s rights, NHMRC-endorsed guidelines.