Introduction

Use of the ERA National Report

The ERA National Report presents data submitted as part of a comprehensive assessment by discipline of the research quality and research activity within Australia’s higher education institutions.

Coverage

ERA retrospectively evaluates the quality of research conducted within the specific reference periods (as shown previously). As the ERA 2015 research outputs reference period ended on 31 December 2013, research quality may have changed since that time.

Comparison across Data Items

Each UoE is assessed against the ERA rating scale. As no comparisons are made between UoEs, ERA ratings cannot be used as a ranking device. Further, as each ERA rating point might include a range of performances, and the gap between rating points is not defined, it is not appropriate to average ratings even within disciplines.

ERA has been designed to provide flexibility for, and recognition of, discipline-specific research behaviours at both the two- and four-digit FoR levels rather than comparison between disciplines or disciplinary clusters. ERA evaluations are conducted by discipline experts interpreting the indicators for each UoE in the context of their own expert knowledge of the discipline. Different indicators apply to each discipline, as outlined in the ERA 2015 Discipline Matrix. For this reason it is not appropriate to make productivity statements about or comparisons between disciplines.

Where possible the data presented in this report is de-duplicated. This does not represent the exact data submitted to ERA 2015 for the purposes of evaluation (which potentially contained duplicate data submitted by multiple institutions).

Please note: numbers are generally rounded to one decimal place in tables throughout this report and income is rounded to whole dollars. Totals may be different to the sum of parts due to rounding.