When the big balloon goes up in the sky…

Today was the big day. Vice Chancellors nation wide sat around refreshing their computer screens with anticipation not seen since they had completed their Year 12 Certificate, waiting to see what the national report card would say. Had they passed? Would they get bragging rights? Who, at this year’s Universities Australia conference would be slinking off into a corner and hiding in shame?

The Excellence in Research Australia 2010 Report was released today. Last week, the Australian Higher Education supplement was expecting a big showing, but was cynical in their approach:

Research-intensive universities will be quick to trumpet the sheer number of 4 and 5 ratings they receive. The less research-intensive universities, however, will point out that just counting the ratings is as much a measure of an institution’s size as a measure of research quality. There will be much ink spilt explaining that a university believes it has done well in proportion to the number of discipline areas in which it is active in research.

Source: New ERA looms for research

Ministers have already begun gloating:

“The Australian Government invests billions of dollars in research each year. ERA gives the Australian taxpayer assurance that their money is being invested wisely and gives the Government a clear idea of the research areas we need to focus on for improvement and continued excellence,” Senator Carr said.

Source: IMPRESSIVE SCORECARD FOR AUSSIE RESEARCH

And then, the moment everyone was waiting for: The ERA Report

For the average postgraduate student, this is a lot of fanfare over very little. Why? Because the ERA is based on what the University had published across the year, trying to sweep away the less favourable lower ranked journals and getting as much as possible published in an “a-star” journal. As Research students, we’re fairly unlikely to be published in the top-level “a-star” journals, so they through any research we had done practically out the door. Some will have noticed that their supervisors were strong-arming them to list their name as first named author, apparently to get it published, but actually to ensure the supervisor gets the kudos. Some academics will even have gone so far as to steal their students’ work, but these are isolated incidents.

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Edit: February 3, 2010
I just want to clear a few things up here. Research Higher Degree students did NOT have their work considered in the ERA – despite the amount of output that we provide for universities, and, indeed, the whole of Australia. Also, this was a consideration of three years of publications, rather than just 2010.
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However, from this years’ release, you can expect to see a few changes coming through in your areas of study. Every University will want to improve. For example, my field of research, Chemical Engineering, had no Universities ranked 5, so they’ll all be working double-time to get more output in research. Heads of study will be pushing to get more research into higher quality journals, which is a task that falls to academics who might have spent too much time supervising or lecturing and not pushing towards research for their Universities. The Go8 can be expected to see this as a war, complete with poaching each others’ top researchers to do better than each other next round.

And left behind, the Postgraduate students, dilly-dallying around the laboratory as we try to do some more of the 40%+ Annual National output of research.

The ERA is out… now to see where the road will take us.

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What do you think of the ERA and what will its influence on Research in Australia be? Comment below.