About ERA
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) is a research quality evaluation program for Australian universities. It was introduced by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.
Macquarie University and ERA 2010
Macquarie University had an outstanding level of success in ERA 2010. Our research performance was rated as outstanding and well above world standard in biological, earth, environmental, and physical sciences as well as in cognitive sciences and psychology.
In total, 80 per cent of Macquarie's research activity was rated as performing at world standard or higher.
ERA 2010 Timeline
| 2003 – 2008 | Evaluation of the quality of research publications across all areas of research from all Australian Universities. |
| January 2011 | ERA 2010 results announced. |
Evaluating clusters, disciplines and sub-disciplines
The ERA initiative is designed to assess the research quality of all 41 Australian universities. To do this, research topics were categorised into eight broad clusters, made up of 24 disciplines and several sub disciplines.
Eight national research clusters
- Physical, Chemical and Earth Sciences
- Humanities and Creative Arts
- Engineering and Environmental Sciences
- Social, Behavioural and Economic Sciences
- Mathematical, Information and Computing Sciences
- Biological Sciences and Biotechnology
- Biomedical and Clinical Health Sciences
- Public and Allied Health Sciences
Of these clusters, six (covering the experimental sciences) were evaluated primarily on bibliometrics. Two (covering humanities and creative arts; and social, behavioural and economic sciences) were evaluated using peer review processes.
For a given discipline, for example, biological sciences, publication quality in individual sub-discipline areas, for example plant biology, was also evaluated.
Evaluation of data submitted for ERA 2010 was undertaken by eight Research Evaluation Committees, broadly representative of the eight distinct discipline cluster groups. Research Evaluation Committees were comprised of 149 individual distinguished and internationally recognised researchers with expertise in research evaluation, both from Australia and overseas.
The five point scale
The quality of publications for each discipline and sub-discipline was evaluated on a 5-point scale:
5 – Outstanding performance well above world standard
4 – Performance above world standard
3 – Average performance at world standard
2 – Performance below world standard
1 – Performance well below world standard
Australian research on an international scale
At the national level:
- 10 per cent of research units evaluated at the discipline level were rated well above world standard (5-rated)
- 14 per cent of research units evaluated at sub-discipline level were rated well above world standard (5-rated)
Approximately two-thirds of Australian research units evaluated were rated at world standard or above.