ERA 2012
On 25 October 2010 Senator the Hon Kim Carr, Minister for the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR), announced that another round of the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative has been scheduled for 2012.
ERA 2012 preparations
Improvements for ERA 2012
The ARC has announced a number of improvements for ERA 2012. There are five areas where the methodology has been refined:
- Refined journal and conference quality indicator – the prescriptive A*/A/B/C ranks used in ERA 2010 will no longer be used in ERA 2012; instead RECs will be presented with a profile of journals and conferences for each unit of evaluation (UoE) ordered by descending frequency of publication. This approach will allow RECs to identify the depth and spread of publishing behaviours and make informed expert judgement regarding the quality and relevance of the journals and conferences to each UoE.
- Improved capacity to accommodate interdisciplinary research – in an extension to the arrangement successfully trialled in 2010 for the mathematical sciences, the ERA 2012 methodology will allow institutions to code journal articles with significant content (66% or greater) not represented by a journal's FoR(s) to apportion the article to another appropriate FoR code of its choice.
- The low volume threshold – the low volume threshold for all peer review disciplines in ERA 2012 will be 50 apportioned weighted outputs (the threshold for citation analysis will remain 50 apportioned indexed articles).
- Attribution of applied measures – the attribution rules for patents, plant breeder's rights and registered designs will be extended to allow those granted to eligible researchers (not only eligible institutions) to be submitted.
- Eligibility of staff – the eligibility criteria for fractional staff will be raised to a 0.4 FTE appointment at the census date. To be eligible for submission, research outputs authored by staff not meeting this threshold will require a by-line.
The ARC will continue to maintain the list of eligible journals and the list
of conferences and their relevant FoR codes in order to preserve the integrity
of the citation benchmarks.
The reference periods for income, esteem and applied measures will remain at
three years.
Submission Timeline
The submission process has commenced and this process has four stages. The following table outlines when each of the submission activities commences and ends:
| Phase | Activity | Start Date | Deadline |
|---|---|---|---|
Submission |
Stage 1
|
Monday, 5 March 2012 | Monday, 26 March 2012 |
| Stage 2 The ARC and institutions perform data integrity checks and confirm the availability of research outputs identified for ERA peer review in repositories. |
Wednesday, 28 March 2012 | Thursday, 12 April 2012 | |
|
Stage 3 Institutions certify final submissions electronically |
Monday, 16 April 2012 | Thursday, 19 April 2012 | |
|
Stage 4 Institutions lodge hard-copy certification statements |
Friday, 20 April 2012 | Friday, 27 April 2012 |
*Relevant information about ERA 2012 Submission can be found here.
Research Evaluation Committees (RECs)
The ARC has announced the membership of the eight RECs for ERA 2012. There are 147 REC members in total, five of whom are UniSA staff:
- Professor Ian Richards: Humanities and Creative Arts - HCA
- Professor Tony Liddicoat: Humanities and Creative Arts - HCA
- Professor Pauline Harris : Education and Human Society - EHS
- Professor Markus Stumptner: Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences - MIC
- Professor Howard Morris : Medical and Health Sciences - MHS
Evaluation and Outcome Reporting
RECs undertake expert review of all relevant indicators for each four-digit and two-digit UoEs and after the final evaluation of each UoE, the ARC will publish the outcomes.