Minister Carr and the ARC have released a consultation paper on the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative. This, as you will recall, was the replacement of the RQF.

The new framework is intended to;

• Identify excellence
• Set Australian research against international benchmarks
• Create incentives to improve quality
• Identify emerging areas
• Promote collaboration
• Encourage scle and focus
• Facilitate interdisciplinary research and
• Minimise burdens on researchers, institutions and assessors.

There will be eight discipline clusters who will be evaluated sequentially with physics, chemical and earth science first cab off the rank. The first stage will use indicators and expert review and indicators will be a combination of common and discipline specific

At this stage ERA will not determine allocation of block grants but current system will continue until the Government implements a new mechanism (ie compacts?).

Disciplines will be evaluated at 2 and 4 digit code level in the new (ANZSRC) research classification by field of research.

Indicators will be in three categories

• Research activity an intensity (eg including research income HDR load and completions)
• Research quality (include publications, ranked outlets, citation analysis etc - research income based on peer review)
• Applied research and translation of research outcomes (to be developed but possibly some income sources and publication indicators to show external recognition - (sounds a bit like impact-lite !!)

Submissions on the consultation paper are invited by 30 June with consultations on cluster one (physics, chemistry and earth sciences to begin in July.

FASTS will be making comments but we suggest that individual societies make some effort to get across the specifics in their discipline cluster. As always, I would be grateful for any feedback on the ERA proposal as we develop FASTS response.

More details on process etc can be found at www.arc.gov.au/era.

Also, click here to view the consultation paper.

Regards


Bradley Smith
Executive Director
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
FASTS
GPO Box 259
Canberra City  2601
ph: 02 6257 2891
fax: 02 6257 2897
Mobile: 0408 511 261
E-mail: fasts@anu.edu.au
www.fasts.org