Office of Research - The “ORB”

Yesterday the Office of Research held another of our information sharing sessions. The topics that we covered includes:

• KAMs
  Presented by Mr Ben Jacobs
• Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research
  Presented by Ms Jenny Smith
• Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative
  Presented by Mr Corey Wallis

Initial feedback from those at the session has been positive. Copies of the presentation slides will be distributed to everyone that had RSVP’d for the event.

If you are interested in receiving a copy of the presentation slides, and you hadn’t RSVP’d for this event, please send an email to research@flinders.edu.au and we’ll send a copy out to you.

Today a media release entitled “Leading Researchers Advise on the Indicators of Research Quality” was published on the Australian Research Council website. The media release outlines the development of the Indicators Development Group (IDG) who will advise on the application of discipline-specific indicators for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative.

From the media release:

The Group is made up of twelve research metrics and statistical experts. Three of these experts are from overseas.

Terry Nolan, Head of the School of Population Health at the University of Melbourne and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, has taken up the role of Chair for the IDG.

“Terry’s previous experience as a member of National Health and Medical Research Council’s Research Committee means that he has made significant contribution to the measurement of research quality in Australia. I am positive that Terry will help produce good outcomes for the ERA initiative,” Senator Carr said.

To help the IDG provide advice on all disciplines, two sub-committees have been created-one for the Creative Arts and the other for the Humanities.

More information is available in the media release.

Accompanying the media release is a new section of the ERA website. The Indicators Development Group section provides details of the group, including membership lists as well as details of the Creative Arts and Humanities sub-committees.

The following items may be of interest. They are from the Higher Education section of The Australian, published today.

• Society for French Studies slams ERA journal rankings
  As President of the Australian Society for French Studies, I have just finished co-ordinating a nationwide response to the federal Government’s and the ARC’s ERA journal ranking exercise.
• Investors drift away from CRCs
  Universities and the nation’s best researchers have shifted out of the once coveted Co-operative Research Centres program in favour of Australian Research Council Discovery and Linkage grants, according to Mary O’Kane’s review of CRCs.
• A colossal cook-up of contradictions
  The reform stew is on the stove, with submissions to the Cutler report on research and innovation and the Bradley review of higher education all in. And it is starting to simmer, with weekend reports on a Council of Australian Governments push to create a demand-driven market in vocational education, with students at the centre.

Recently published on the Flinders University website is the Higher Education Sector Reviews website for staff. A section of the website is dedicated to the The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) Initiative.

Included in the website are links to the various ERA related documents including the Flinders University response to the recent consultation paper. I encourage anyone with an interest to the ERA to visit the website.

Updates from the Office of Research regarding the ERA initiative will, as always, be posted here in the ERA category of the Office of Research blog.

A reminder to those working on the ERA Journal Ranking spreadsheets that they are due today. If you are a Discipline Cluster Contact person please send your spreadsheets to me by close of business today.

If you have been working on a submission and you are not a Discipline Cluster Contact person I strongly recommend contacting the appropriate Discipline Cluster Contact person as soon as possible.

If for any reason you are unable to do so, please contact me as soon as possible to let me know. Please note that any delays in getting the spreadsheets to me will cause a delay in the merging and checking process.

The ARC Journal Ranking spreadsheet is a very large file and therefore it is possible that you will not be able to send it via email. The easiest way to resolve this issue is to send me a compressed copy. A compressed file, also known as a zip file, will be much smaller than the original file.

It is possible using Windows XP to create a compressed file using this procedure:

1. Right click on the file
2. Select “Send To” from the pop-up menu
3. Select “Compressed (zipped) folder, from the secondary menu
4. A new file will be created
5. Send the newly created file to me

These are articles and posts mentioning the Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative and may be of interest. They have been sourced from the Higher Education section of the The Australian.

• New ERA to focus on aiding top hubs
  The Rudd Government’s planned university research performance exercise could be used to identify new research hubs and make them accountable, Innovation Minister Kim Carr told a closed Group of Eight conference last week.
• Little joy for rank outsiders
  It is instructive to compare the somewhat muted response to the Australian Research Council’s Excellence in Research for Australia journal-ranking exercise with the storm provoked in Britain by the similar — though in some ways less ambitious — European Reference Index for the Humanities ranking exercise conducted by the European Science Foundation.
• What of the rank outsiders?
  HELEN Beebee’s illuminating piece on the British reaction to the ranking of journals in the humanities raises some important issues (”Little joy for rank outsiders”, HES print July 23 and online).
• Hard lessons in the quest for quality
  Research policy experts are right in being concerned that the proposal to measure academic research performance will result in unofficial university rankings and concentrate funding allocations in research-intensive universities (HES, July 9).

The following articles may be of interest. They are from the Higher Education section of The Australian, published today.

• Union push for academic freedoms
  The Bradley review is lazy policy, a recycling of the 1980s’ Dawkins reform agenda and a testament to the inexperience of the Government, according to the leader of the academic union.
• Call for research to be judged by effect on real life
  The technology universities have called for the Rudd Government’s research performance exercise to adopt indicators that measure researchers’ impact on reducing death and disease, and improving safety, trade, gross domestic product and quality of life.
• New ERA to focus on aiding top hubs
  The Rudd Government’s planned university research performance exercise could be used to identify new research hubs and make them accountable, Innovation Minister Kim Carr told a closed Group of Eight conference last week.

The following articles may be of interest. They are from the Higher Education section of The Australian, published earlier this week.

• League tables for unis ‘inevitable’
  Research policy experts believe the federal Government’s proposal to measure academic research performance will result in unofficial university rankings, despite the exercise being designed to prevent this occurring.
• Staff drought as more shun career in sector
  Universities have backed Bradley review calls for urgent research into academic workforce levels as institutions report increasing difficulty in recruiting for key disciplines.
• Excellence sacrificed for money
  Universities in narrow pursuit of commercialisation sacrifice their wider economic role as disseminators of knowledge, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned.
• In one click, what’s yours is mined
  “We are drowning in data and starving for knowledge,” is the way Queensland University of Technology analyst Richi Nayak describes the challenge of data mining, the science of digging through vast amounts of information for patterns not apparent to old-fashioned analysis.

The list of Discipline Cluster Contact people for the Journal Ranking exercise that we are undertaking as part of the ERA initiative has been updated.

We welcome them to the team:

1. Physics, Chemical and Earth Sciences (PCE)
Dr Martin Johnston

3. Engineering and Environmental Sciences (EE)
Professor John Roddick

5. Mathematical, Information and Communication Sciences (MIC)
Professor John Roddick

If you have any questions about the Journal Ranking process, please direct them to the appropriate discipline contact person.

Alternatively you can contact the ERA project team in the Office of Research by sending an email to era@flinders.edu.au or by contacting Ms Jenny Smith directly.

Recently the Office of Research was asked:

Does it matter that a journal is not listed under a particular discipline area but is listed elsewhere? My initial reaction was that it did not matter, but then why are some journals listed more than once in different discipline areas in the initial listings provided by the ARC?

The answer is yes it does matter, very much.

Based on the information we have currently, we understand that the citation analysis that is based on these journal rankings will be undertaken at a discipline level. This means that all journals in your discipline area should be in the journal ranking spreadsheet with an FoR that is appropriate to your discipline.

It is also important to remember that a journal in the list will only have one rank across all disciplines. For example If:

• A journal is in “Discipline A” with a ranking of “A*”
• The same journal is in “Discipline B” with a ranking of “B”

The disciplines will need to agree on an overall ranking for that journal that will apply to both disciplines.

If you have any questions about the Journal Ranking process, please direct them to the appropriate discipline cluster contact person.

Alternatively you can contact the ERA project team in the Office of Research by sending an email to era@flinders.edu.au or by contacting Ms Jenny Smith directly.