The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative

On 26 February 2008, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the Hon. Senator Kim Carr, announced the new research quality and evaluation system.

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative is being developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in consultation with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). It will assess research quality within Australia’s higher education institutions using a combination of metrics based indicators and expert review.

The new framework aims to:

• identify excellence across the full spectrum of research activity;
• compare Australia’s university research effort against international benchmarks;
• create incentives to improve the quality of research; and
• identify emerging research areas and opportunities for further development.

ERA will not determine the allocation of research block grants. The Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) process managed by DIISR will continue to inform research block grant allocations until such a time that the Government considers and implements any new mechanisms.

Evaluations will take place in the following discipline clusters:

• Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE);
• Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA);
• Engineering and Environmental Sciences (EE);
• Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences (SBE);
• Mathematics, Information and Communication Sciences (MIC);
• Biological and Biotechnology Sciences (BB);
• Biomedical and Clinical Health Sciences (BCH); and
• Public and Allied Health Services (PAH).

A Trial Evaluation of clusters PCE and HCA is currently underway. Outcomes from the ERA Trial are expected to be released in December 2009, see ERA Trial.

The unit of evaluation for ERA will be research disciplines within an institution, classified by the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), Field of Research (FoR) codes at both two-digit (22 Divisions) and four-digit (157 Groups) level where relevant.

The Consultation Paper was released in June 2008, the final PCE and HCA Trial Submission Guidelines was released in March 2009. Submissions for the Trial closed on 4 September 2009.

The ERA initiative will use a range of indicators and other proxies to support the evaluation of research excellence; one of these indicators is publication of articles with a list of ranked research journals.

Journals

The ARC released PCE and HCA Trial journal rankings lists in March 2009:

• PCE Trial Journal List
• HCE Trial Journal List

Submissions for the ERA 2010 journal list closed on 2 November 2009. Once the journal rankings have been finalised across all disciplines, a single list will be created and used for ERA 2010.

ERA Submission

The ARC has released the following documents:

• ERA Indicator Principles
• ERA Indicator Discriptors
• ERA Submission Guidelines for PCE and HCA
• ERA-SEER Technical Specifications for PCE and HCA
• ERA Evaluation Guidelines for PCE and HCA
• ERA Indicator Benchmark Methodology for PCE and HCA
• ERA Indicators Consultation Paper

Additionally, the ARC is publishing an ERA Newsletter and providing an online ERA FAQ both of which are updated as required.

• ERA Newsletter
• ERA Frequently Asked Questions

ERA @ ANU

• HCA ERA Submission Presentation (ANU ORMD)
• Submission Requirements for PCE and HCA

More about ERA:

• Consultation paper (June 2008)
• ARC Statement concerning the ANZSRC FoR codes
• ERA Presentations (ARC Outreach Team):
  • 27 July 2009

Contacts: