Excellence in Research Australia (ERA)

• ERA 2010 Outcomes
  
• ERA 2012 News
• ERA Background
• ERA 2010
  
• ERA Journal Rankings
  

ERA 2010 Outcomes for UWS

The quality of UWS’s research has been highlighted by “at or above world standard” results in 29 disciplines in the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) exercise.

In its key areas of research specialisation, UWS has received the highest ranking for research quality in the inaugural national quality assessment exercise.

Rated at 5 in the national rankings, being “characterised by evidence of outstanding performance well above world standard”,

• the renowned Centre for Cultural Research
  
• the newly established Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment
  

Ranked above world standard (a rating of 4) are the UWS specialisations,

• Civil Engineering - which forms the recently established Civionics Research Centre (established in 2009)
  
• Performing Arts and Creative Writing and Literary Studies - both of these reflecting the University’s strength in music and literature as manifested in the research activity of the Writing and Society Research Group and the schools of Communication Arts and Humanities and Languages.

Areas that UWS is developing as fields of research activity were judged to be operating at world standard (a rating of 3), including:

• Pure Mathematics
• Physical Chemistry
• Microbiology
• Nursing
• Urban and Regional Planning
• Education Systems
• Specialist Studies in Education
• Human Geography
• Other Studies in Human Society
• Cognitive Sciences
• Film, Television & Digital Media
• Linguistics
• Historical Studies
  

The ERA outcomes have confirmed the efficacy of UWS’s strategy of investing in areas of strength and emerging strength, particularly through its Research Investment Strategy, initiated in 2006 by the Vice Chancellor and the Board of Trustees with a commitment to invest $50million over 10 years to boost overall research activity and quality.

UWS ERA Outcomes

The full list of results for UWS (opens in a new window) is available from the ARC website.

ERA 2010 National Report

The full ERA 2010 National Report (opens in a new window) is available from the ARC website.

Rating Scale

Each 2 and 4-digit FoR code (where the minimum threshold was met) received a score out of five. The scores for the 2-digit codes were not simply an average of the 4-digit scores, they were evaluated separately.

Rating	Descriptor
5	The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of outstanding performance well above world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation.
4	The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of performance above world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation.
3	The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of average performance at world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation.
2	The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of performance below world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation.
1	The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of performance well below world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation.
NA	Not assessed due to low volume. The number of research outputs does not meet the volume threshold standard for evaluation in ERA.

In order to achieve a rating at a particular point on the scale, the majority of the output from a unit of evaluation will normally be expected to meet the standard for that rating point. The term 'world standard' used throughout the scale refers to a quality standard. It does not refer to the nature or geographical scope of particular disciplines, or to the locus of research nor its place of dissemination.

ERA 2010

The Vice Chancellor certified the final ERA submission on June 31st following its upload to the ARC’s data system (SEER) by the Office of Research Services. All items for ERA review were available to reviewers via an ERA-only access version of the UWS Research Repository.

Since the announcement of ERA by the Labor government and the demise of the previous government’s Research Quality Framework in February 2008, the Office of Research Services has ensured that UWS has participated in all aspects of the sector’s development of ERA 2010 including:

• Multiple consultations by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and the ARC on the indicators and the guidelines.
• A pilot evaluation of the IT systems.
• The 2009 ERA Trial of two clusters.
• July 2009, ORS facilitated feedback and recommendations for changes to 354 journals.
• The UWS Library was funded for staff to work on the population of the Institutional Repository.
  

Data Readiness

The Office of Research Services (ORS) and the University Library cleaned and prepared 7,500 publication data items, 1000 income items, and 100 IP and patent items for uploading. ORS established a Researcher Portal, enabling authors to check that the University holds all their eligible publications. Publications not held by the Office of Research Services, in particular those of new UWS staff, were sourced and entered into the integrated research management database.

Research Services conducted briefings for researchers across each of the eight ERA clusters. Input from researchers was sought around data which is not normally collected by the Office of Research Services for HERDC and which were not part of the ERA Trial in 2009, in particular, a highly constrained set of esteem measures which was added to the mix of indicators for review.

Fields of Research are being used for ERA analysis of staffing and publications. Initial preparations included the Office of Research Services translating existing RFCDs to ANZSRC Fields of Research and Socio-Economic codes for all grants and publications held at UWS. Each eligible staff member must be reported via a 4 digit Field of Research in addition to the FoRs assigned by the ARC to Journals and reported previously for all grants. Some categories of publications – book chapters and research books – may not have previously assigned FoRs, therefore, ORS worked with researchers to ensure appropriate FoRs are assigned and apportioned across FoRs where this is appropriate. FoRs were assigned to all publications not held by ORS as part of previous HERDC data.

In some ERA clusters, institutions are able to nominate 20 per cent of publications for peer review by the assessment panel. Research Services worked with FoR academic leaders to identify the suitable outputs.

The Office of Research Services worked tirelessly with the University Library to ensure that all publication outputs are available for audit and review by the assessors. ORS provided over 3000 items to Scopus – the publication index service being used by the ARC for ERA 2010 - for ID tagging and worked closely with the company to ensure all eligible items are tagged and available. As Scopus was unable to provide a large number of its ID numbers, ORS manually sourced those and tagged the data to ensure all items are valid.  Each grant item had to be tagged to an ARC code not previously used and had several lines of data created to meet the ARC’s system requirements.

ERA Journal Rankings

The ARC has refined the journal indicator for ERA 2012 – details of which have been provided by the ARC (opens in a new window). Profiles of A*, A, B and C ranks will not be used. A conference list will not be used for ERA 2012.

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