General

• Purpose
• Lodgement Dates
• Definition of Research
• Key Characteristics
• Year of Publication
• Author Affiliation
• Commercial Publisher
• Peer Review
• Foreign Language Publications
• Electronic Works
• More Information

Purpose

[1.1] The purpose of the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) is to collect performance data on Research Income and Research Publications to be used in the calculation of funding for the following:

• Research Training Scheme
• Institutional Grants Scheme
• Research Infrastructure Block Grants Scheme (Research Income only)
• Australian Postgraduate Awards Scheme
• International Postgraduate Research Scholarships Scheme.

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Lodgement Dates

To enable the Office of Research Services (ORS) to meet the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) deadline, your publications need to be lodged and verification materials received by ORS as early as possible. ORS progressively validates lodgements until the end of April for the previous calendar year. For example, a 2006 publication can be lodged up to 30 April 2007.

Any lodgements submitted after 30 April 2007 will be at risk of not being included unless ALL verification materials are received without delay and require no further validation.

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Definition of Research

[1.2] For the purposes of this collection, the essential characteristic of research activity is that it leads to publicly verifiable outcomes which are open to peer appraisal.

Research and experimental development comprises:

• creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications (1)
• any activity classified as research and experimental development is characterised by originality; it should have investigation as a primary objective and should have the potential to produce results that are sufficiently general for humanity's stock of knowledge (theoretical and/or practical) to be recognisably increased. Most higher education research work would qualify as research and experimental development.

Research includes pure basic research, strategic basic research, applied research and experimental development.

Activities meet the definition of research that support research such as:

• provision of professional, technical, administrative or clerical support and/or assistance to staff directly engaged in research and experimental development
• management of staff who are either directly engaged in research and experimental development or are providing professional, technical or clerical support or assistance to those staff
• activities of students undertaking postgraduate research courses
• development of postgraduate research courses
• supervision of students undertaking postgraduate research courses.

Activities that do not support research should be excluded. Such activities may include:

• preparation for teaching
• scientific and technical information services
• general purpose or routine data collection
• standardisation and routine testing
• feasibility studies (except into research and experimental development projects)
• specialised routine medical care
• commercial, legal and administrative aspects of patenting, copyright or licensing activities
• routine computer programming, systems work or software maintenance (research and experimental development into applications software, new programming languages and new operating systems would normally meet the definition of research).

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Key Characteristics

[4.1] For the purposes of this collection, a 'research publication' is characterised by:

• scholarly activity, as evidenced by discussion of the relevant literature, an awareness of the history and antecedents of work described, and a format which allows a reader to trace sources of the work through citations, footnotes etc.
• originality, that is, it is not a compilation of existing works
• veracity/validity through a peer validation processes or by satisfying the commercial publisher or gallery processes
• increasing the stock of knowledge
• being in a form that enables dissemination of knowledge.

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Year of Publication

[4.3.1] The research must have been published in 2006 and the date of publication must appear within or on the work being claimed. Letters from authors, editors, creators etc. stating that a work was published in 2006, even though no such date exists within the publication, is not acceptable evidence of year of publication.

An exception to this may apply for Journal Articles or Conference Publications that are produced on CD-ROM or are web-based and no date exists within or on the publication. In these instances a letter from the editor of the journal or the conference organiser may be accepted to indicate the year published. Note that this applies only to works where no date exists within the work being claimed. A letter from an editor or conference organiser cannot override a date that is displayed within the work.

A work published in an earlier year cannot be counted as a 2006 publication, even if it is not received by the author or by libraries until 2006.

The year of publication would normally be the latest of:

• the nominal year
• the year indicated as published
• the year indicated as printed, or
• the year of copyright.

Copies of the pages showing the available publication details must be included in verification materials.

This means that if the first publication (e.g. Australian Journal of Astrophysics December 2006) is shown as having been published, printed or copyrighted in 2007, it cannot be counted in the current collection because the nominal year of publication has been overridden. It will have to be considered for the following collection of year 2007 publications.

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Author Affiliation

[4.3.2] Institutional affiliation must be identified either:

1. within or on the work being claimed; or
2. where institutional affiliation is not identified within a work, the university must obtain a statement from the author indicating that he or she undertook the research leading to the publication in his or her capacity as a staff member or student of the university; and
3. either:

• a statement from the Director of Human Resources or Dean of Students (or equivalent) indicating that the author was an appointee or student of the university in 2006 (or earlier if that was when the research leading to the publication was conducted), or
• an extract from the university's staff or student list that lists the author. 

Where a publication shows that an author has affiliation to more than one institution (e.g. Janet Harvey, Tutor in Economics, University of X; PhD student, University of Y), each Australian university named in that by-line can claim the publication at full value.

Adjunct fellows, honorary staff members and staff on leave are considered affiliated with a university if the university is identified in the by-line.

NB: Copies of staff cards are not appropriate evidence of institutional affiliation. If UWS affiliation is not identified within the work being claimed, please provide a statement as per point 2 above. The Office of Research Services will arrange for further documentation to comply with point 3.

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Commercial Publisher

[4.3.3] The concept of a commercial publisher is used as a surrogate quality test for books and book chapters in place of any formal peer review requirement.

A recognised commercial publisher is an entity for which the core business is producing books and distributing them for sale.

If publishing is not the core business of an organisation but there is a distinct organisational entity devoted to commercial publication and its publications are not completely paid for or subsidised by the parent organisation or a third party, the publisher will be accepted as a commercial publisher.

For the purpose of this data collection, university and other self-supporting higher education institution presses are regarded as commercial publishers, provided that they have responsibility for the distribution of the publication and not only its printing.

A Register of Acceptable Commercial Publishers (PDF, 74Kb) is available on the DEST website. This list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of all acceptable publishers. Institutions will need to be satisfied that a publisher not on the list satisfies the criteria for a commercial publisher.

Note that many of the books published by professional bodies do not report original research findings but report the results of evaluations, or repackage existing information for the benefit of professionals or practitioners. It is important that institutions assess these publications very carefully against the definition of research provided in section 1.2 on this page, and only count those publications which report research activities.

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Peer Review

[4.3.5] For the purposes of this collection, an acceptable peer review process is one that involves an independent, expert review.

The peer review process must involve assessment of the publication:

• in its entirety - not merely an abstract or extract
• before publication
• by appropriately independent, qualified experts. Independent in this context means independent of the author.

For journal articles, any of the following are acceptable as evidence:

• the journal is listed in one of the Institute for Scientific Information indexes
• the journal is classified as 'refereed' in Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory (Volume 5 - Refereed Serials) or via Ulrich's website
• the journal is included in DEST's Register of Refereed Journals (see section 4.6.2)
• there is a statement in the journal which shows that contributions are peer reviewed
• there is a statement or acknowledgement from the journal editor which shows that contributions are peer reviewed, or
• a copy of a reviewer's assessment relating to the article.

Note:

1. A statement from an author that a publication was peer reviewed will not be accepted.
2. The existence of a national or international advisory board is not sufficient evidence that all relevant publications are assessed by members of it.

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Foreign Language Publications

[4.3.6] Foreign language publications are eligible to be counted. The same verification evidence is required, in English, as for any other works that are sampled for audit. It is not necessary to translate the entire publication, but all relevant sections required for the verification of information to demonstrate that it meets the criteria of the category against which it is being claimed. This includes evidence that the work meets the definition of research.

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Electronic Works

Electronic works are eligible to be counted, provided they meet all of the criteria of the publications category against which they are being claimed.

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More Information

For more information review the 2007 Higher Education Research Data Collection Specifications for the Collection of 2006 Data (PDF, 196Kb) or contact Mark Geloven the Data Officer who manages the DEST Publications Collection.

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