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2009 Trial Development

Development of ERA began shortly after the Minister’s announcement in February 2008.

ERA development in 2008 included the release of the ERA Consultation Paper, which was the first formal step in communicating with the sector.

The ARC launched a consultation process on journal rankings in June 2008. For this process, the ARC sought feedback from the sector to assist with the development of research journal rankings. More information on this consultation process is available on the Ranked Journal List Development page.

The ARC conducted a Pilot of the ERA IT (SEER) in October and November 2008. The Pilot tested the ability of the IT system to capture a subset of ERA information—in particular, the four major research publication categories and Australian competitive grant income. Institutions were invited to participate in the Pilot. The Pilot was confined to the PCE Cluster (Cluster One).

The Minister announced the establishment of the Indicators Development Group (IDG) in August 2008. The IDG was established to consider, test and recommend appropriate discipline-specific indicators, including metrics and other proxies of quality and activity. More information about the IDG is available on the IDG page.

In December, the IDG made a series of recommendations to the ARC on ERA. After considering the recommendations, the ARC developed two key documents for the ERA 2009 trial and the full-implementation of ERA—the ERA Indicator Principles and ERA Indicator Descriptors. The ARC released these documents in December 2008. More information on the documents and the ERA indicators are available on the Indicators page.

In 2008, the ARC presented information on the development of ERA to various institutions and interested groups. You can view the presentation on the Presentations page.

2009 Consultation Paper

On 4 June 2008 the Minister announced the ARC's release of the ERA Consultation Paper to the higher education and research sectors.

This Consultation Paper was the first formal step in communicating with the sector on the ERA initiative and requested feedback from the higher education and research community.

The sector's contribution to this consultation process was essential to establish arrangements that will ensure that the ERA initiative achieves its primary goal of identifying the strengths in Australia’s higher education sector.