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ERA Overview

In 2008, the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, the Hon. Senator Kim Carr, announced the release of a new research quality and evaluation framework initiative.

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative is developed and managed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) as a major funder of public sector research. It assesses research quality within Australia's Higher education institutions using a combination of indicators and expert review by committees comprising experienced, internationally recognised experts.

The Research Excellence website contains relevant and up-to-date information about the ERA Initiative including the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC) Field of Research (FOR) codes and FAQ's.

ERA is broken up into the following discipline specific clusters:

  1. Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE)
  2. Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA)
  3. Engineering and Environmental Sciences (EE)
  4. Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences (SBE)
  5. Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences (MIC)
  6. Biological and Biotechnological Sciences (BB)
  7. Biomedical and Clinical Health Sciences (BCH) and
  8. Public and Allied Health Sciences (PAHS)  

In 2010, CQUniversity participated in the full ERA process and submitted research data for all eight clusters.  Results for this data collection have been released and can be viewed at the ARC website.

The ARC has announced the next round of ERA will occur in 2012.  The submission phase will commence in March 2012.

  ERA 2012 Reference Periods: 

Data Type

Reference Period

Years

Research Outputs

1 January 2005 - 31 December 2010

6

Research Income

1 January 2008 - 31 December 2010

3

Applied Measures

1 January 2008 - 31 December 2010

3

Esteem Measures

1 January 2008 - 31 December 2010

3

Researcher eligibility is based on a single staff census date, which is 31 March 2011.

Current Consultations

 The following draft documents for ERA 2012 have been released for comment:

Comments on these drafts may be emailed to Richelle Coll (r.coll@cqu.edu.au) at the Office of Research for collation in the Institutional response by Wednesday 27 July, 2011.

The Submission Guidelines and Discipline Matrix outline the rules for the submission of data for ERA 2012.  Key documents for the ERA 2012 submission and evaluation processes will be published on the ARC website as they become available.

 

 Policies and Formal Documents

Esteem Measures

Journal Rankings

The ARC is consulting with the higher education sector regarding research outlet rankings for the ERA intitiative. Please note: the ARC will not be updating this list with current publications or rankings. 

Conference Rankings

News and Updates 

The Australian, Higher Education Section, 28 January 2009, "Research pot dangerously dry"