Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) - 2012
ERA is the Excellence in Research for Australia initiative, developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC) in conjunction with the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. ERA will use a range of indicators to assess research quality.
What's changed from ERA 2010?
- The prescriptive A*/A/B and C journal rankings have been removed, and replaced with a new journal indicator
- Improved capability to accommodate interdisciplinary research
- A change in the rules for the attribution of patents, plant breeders’ rights and registered designs to allow them to be submitted when they are granted to eligible researchers
Journal Unit of Evaluation - new for ERA 2012
"The new indicator will display, for each unit of evaluation, a table listing all of the journals in which the articles submitted to that UoE are published. Journals in this table will be ordered by the number of articles, such that the journal containing the greatest number of articles for that university’s UoE will appear at the top of the table, then the second greatest, and so on. The indicator will display the journal titles, the total apportioned articles published in them, the contribution of that number of apportioned articles to the university’s UoE’s total article count (as a percentage) and a cumulative percentage.
The table will be unique to each UoE because of the different publishing patterns of disciplines across different institutions. Building on their own knowledge, RECs will be able to identify the depth and spread of publishing behaviours within a UoE. The table will inform expert judgements regarding the relevance of the journals to the research being published e.g. ‘Is this an appropriate journal for this research?’. ‘Is it a highly regarded journal?’ This will allow RECs to take into account any regional or applied focus of research in a UoE."
This information is taken directly from the ARC website at www.arc.gov.au/era/faq.htm
Journal and conference lists for ERA 2012
The journal list will still be maintained, along with a designation of up to 3 FoR codes. The conference list will no longer apply for ERA 2012.
Discipline Clusters
The journals are divided into eight discipline clusters.
- Cluster 1: Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences
- Cluster 2: Humanities and Creative Arts
- Cluster 3: Engineering and Environmental Sciences
- Cluster 4: Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences
- Cluster 5: Mathematics, Information and Computing Sciences
- Cluster 6: Biological and Biotechnological Sciences
- Cluster 7: Biomedical and Clinical Research Sciences
- Cluster 8: Public and Allied Health Sciences
Field of Research (FoR) codes
Journals in the list have been assigned up to three Field of Research codes. A FoR may consist of two, four or six digits. The FoR codes are part of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification.
Citation provider for ERA 2012
Scopus have been chosen as the citation provider for ERA. Scopus can be used to obtain bibliometric data and contains a searchable index that allows researchers to uncover the research that influenced an author's work or to discover the impact a published item has had on current research.
Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
- The ARC has a FAQ section which addresses many questions surrounding ERA 2012.
- More information on research quality is available from the University's web page on ERA
- For any assistance with bibliometrics please contact your Academic Library Services Team.