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Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)

Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) is a federal government initiative, developed by the Australian Research Council (ARC), to assess research quality within Australia's higher education institutions.

The Objectives of ERA are to

  1. Establish an evaluation framework that gives government, industry, business and the wider community assurance of the excellence of research conducted in Australia's higher education institutions;
  2. Provide a national stock take of discipline-level areas of research strength and areas where there is opportunity for development in Australia's higher education institutions;
  3. Identify excellence across the full spectrum of research performance;
  4. Identify emerging research areas and opportunities for further development; and
  5. Allow for comparisons of Australia's research nationally and internationally for all discipline areas.

ERA assesses research at the discipline level and uses the ABS Field of Research (FoR) Codes at the 4-digit level to categorise research. Data submitted at the 4-digit level will also be rolled up and assessed at the 2-digit level for a broader assessment.

The ARC has grouped the FoR codes into the following 8 disciplines clusters

  1. Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE)
  2. Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA)
  3. Engineering and Environmental Sciences (EE)
  4. Education and Human Society (EHS)
  5. Economics and Commerce (EC)
  6. Mathematics, Information and Computer Sciences (MIC)
  7. Biological and Biotechnical Sciences (BB)
  8. Medical and Health Sciences (MHS)

Eligible Staff

All research-active staff, including permanent academic staff, research-only staff, post-doctoral staff, as well as technical, general or casual staff, employed by the University are eligible for inclusion in ERA. Research-active in this context meant having produced a research item of interest. In most cases the person had been a co-author on a publication, or named on a grant or a patent.

Honorary staff including adjunct, conjoint, emeritus, visiting, and all other honorary staff areeligible for ERA, but only outputs that demonstrated a publication association with Southern Cross University (SCU), where the University is given as the author's affiliation in the by-line of the publication, are eligible.

ERA Contact

Division of Research
Liaison Officer
Wendy Scott

t: +61 2 6626 9371
f: +61 2 6626 9145
e: wendy.scott@scu.edu.au

Updated: 30 May 2012