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Indicators Development Group and sub-committees progress report - October 2008
The Indicators Development Group (IDG) provided advice to the ARC across a range of discipline-specific indicators for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative.
The IDG comprised 12 experts who took advice from 21 discipline-specific representatives from the Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE) and Humanities and Creative Arts (HCA) disciplines, to ensure the application of appropriate indicators. The IDG was supported by an analytical testing team, contracted to the ARC, to test various approaches using Australian Higher Education Institution data.
The IDG met four times since being established in August 2008. Following their final meeting in November 2008, they made a number of recommendations to the Australian Research Council (ARC) Chief Executive Officer (CEO). These recommendations included the ERA indicator principles and methodologies.
The key issues that the IDG are considered were the development of indicator principles and methodologies and completion of a proposed discipline-specific indicator matrix for each cluster. This included examination of citation coverage and benchmarks. The IDG also identified other discipline-specific indicators that may be good proxies for research quality, as well as indicators of applied research and translation of research outcomes. Additionally, the IDG considered the issues of interdisciplinary research, and the use of peer and expert review.
To help the IDG provide advice on cluster two disciplines, two sub-committees were created-one for the Creative Arts and the other for the Humanities.
The IDG asked its sub-committees to consider and report on a range of possible tiered indicators other than ranked journals. They were also asked to identify other quality based esteem measures that are robust and quantitative. In addition, the Creative Arts sub-committee examined how to define the research component of the research output in a range of disciplines.
The Humanities and Creative Arts sub-committees met in September, October and November.
In preparation for cluster one the ARC consulted eminent researchers in the PCE disciplines at a workshop in Brisbane in October 2008.
After considering the advice they received from a range of discipline experts, the IDG reported to the ARC CEO on their findings and recommendations.ERA ranked journals update
The ARC would like to thank the higher education sector for their feedback to the recent ranked journals exercise. The following process was used to develop a final ranked journal list for the 2009 trial of ERA:
- cleansing of data received to remove inconsistencies of format
- analysis of submissions to identify outliers
- assessment of new journals submitted through the process
- further review by stakeholders.
The ARC released the 2010 ERA Journal Title list for feedback from September to November 2009. This allowed for omitted journals and ISSN checks to be submitted to the ARC.
ERA ranked journals update
The ARC would like to thank the higher education sector for their feedback to the recent ranked journals exercise. The following process was used to develop a final ranked journal list for the 2009 trial of ERA:
- cleansing of data received to remove inconsistencies of format
- analysis of submissions to identify outliers
- assessment of new journals submitted through the process
- further review by stakeholders.
The ARC has released the final ranked journal list for PCE and HCA disciplines. The ARC has also released an overview of the process to finalise the journal list for the 2010 full implementation of ERA.
