About the ERA Assessment

Overview

The Australian Research Council (ARC) is responsible for administering Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), Australia's national research evaluation framework. ERA aims to identify and promote excellence across the full spectrum of research activity, including discovery, experimental and applied research within Australian higher education institutions.

ERA 2018 evaluated the quality of the research undertaken by eligible higher education providers ('institutions').

Objectives

The objectives of ERA are to:

• Continue to develop and maintain an evaluation framework that gives government, industry, business and the wider community assurance of the excellence of research conducted in Australian higher education institutions
• Provide a national stocktake of discipline level areas of research strength and areas where there is opportunity for development in Australian higher education institutions
• Identify excellence across the full spectrum of research performance
• Identify emerging research areas and opportunities for further development
• Allow for comparisons of research in Australia, nationally and internationally, for all discipline areas.

ERA 2018 Evaluation Process

Evaluation of data submitted for ERA 2018 was undertaken by eight Research Evaluation Committees (RECs), broadly representative of eight discipline clusters. The ERA 2018 Research Evaluation Committees were comprised of 155 distinguished and internationally recognised researchers from Australia and overseas, with expertise in their fields and in research evaluation. Further details concerning the ERA 2018 Evaluation process, including moderation and conflict of interest procedures, can be found in the ERA 2018 Evaluation Handbook.

Indicators

For ERA, Research Evaluation Committees (RECs) evaluate and rate Unit of Evaluation (UoEs). Three broad categories of indicators inform their evaluations:

• Indicators of research quality: Research quality is considered based on citation analysis, or ERA peer review, and other supporting quality indicators.
• Indicators of research activity: Research activity is considered based on research outputs, research income and other research items within the context of the profile of eligible researchers.
• Indicators of research application: Research application is considered based on research commercialisation income, patents, plant breeder's rights, registered designs, and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) endorsed guidelines. Other measures, such as publishing behaviour and some other categories of research income, can also provide information about research application.

ERA2018 Discipline Clusters

The RECs evaluate data collected across eight discipline clusters. Discipline clusters are a construct developed primarily to assist in balancing workload across the various FoR codes. The discipline clusters for ERA2018 are:

• Biological and Biotechnological Sciences (BB)
• Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA)
• Economics and Commerce (EC)
• Education and Human Society (EHS)
• Engineering and Environmental Sciences (EE)
• Mathematical, Information and Computing Sciences (MIC)
• Medical and Health Sciences (MHS)
• Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE).

See the ERA 2018 Discipline Matrix (https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/key-documents) for a full list of FoR codes and their discipline cluster for ERA18 purposes.

Unit of Evaluation & Disciplines

The Unit of Evaluation for ERA is the research discipline for each institution as defined by Field of Research (FoR) codes. ERA defines disciplines as four-digit and two-digit Fields of Research (FoR) Codes, as identified in the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC; https://www.abs.gov.au/).

Evaluations occurred at the two- and four-digit FoR code levels for UoEs that met the low volume threshold. National-level profiles of disciplines aggregated across institutions at the two- and four-digit FoR code level include information from all submitting institutions, including from those which did not meet the low volume threshold and were therefore not assessed.

UoEs do not correspond to named disciplines, departments or research groups within an institution. The ARC calculates indicators at the four-digit and two-digit FoR levels based on the data each institution submits. The ARC combines this information to create four-digit and two-digit Units of Evaluation (UoE). See Section 3.2 of the ARC submission guidelines for more information (https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/key-documents). For the full list of disciplines and FoR codes see the ERA 2018 Discipline Matrix (https://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/key-documents).

Fields of Research (FoR) Codes

For the purposes of ERA, disciplines are defined as two- and four-digit Fields of Research (FoRs) codes as identified in the Australia and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC; https://www.abs.gov.au/) 2008 released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Statistics New Zealand.

The ANZSRC provides 22 two-digit FoR codes, 157 four-digit FoR codes and an extensive range of six-digit codes. ERA undertakes evaluation at both the two- and four-digit FoR code level. Institutions submitted data to ERA at the four–digit level and these were aggregated to form the two- and four-digit Units of Evaluation (UoEs).

The two-digit FoR code is the highest level of the ANZSRC hierarchy; it relates to a broad discipline field, for example, Physical Sciences (02) or History and Archaeology (21). A two-digit FoR code consists of a collection of related four-digit FoR codes. The four-digit FoR code is the second level of the ANZSRC hierarchy and relates to a specific discipline field of a two-digit FoR code. For example, Astronomical and Space Sciences (0201) or Archaeology (2101).

What were the Reference periods?

What do the results mean?

ERA utilises a five-point rating scale. The rating scale is broadly consistent with the approach taken in research evaluation processes in other countries to allow for international comparison.

Futher Reading

Additional information about the ERA assessment can be found on our Interpreting the Data page. Further information is available on the ERA intranet site.