The Honourable Senator Kim Carr

Minister for Industry, Innovation, Science and Research

Commonwealth of Australia

Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)

We the undersigned have a number of major concerns about the Excellence in Research for Australia 2010 exercise (ERA), the results of which were published by the Australian Research Council in January 2011.  In particular, we are concerned that the ERA:

i)     will restrict Australia’s research capacity by denying many academic staff the opportunity to engage in research, and

ii)     will be used inappropriately by universities in the allocation of workloads, performance management, redundancies, promotions, appointments and grant application processes.

As well as our concerns about its impacts on university staff, we also believe that, in its current form, the ERA is a poor mechanism for assessing the quality of research.  

Amongst other things the ERA:

·         lacks transparency of the assessment processes;

·         fails to reflect the reality or complexity of the existing research landscape, including multidisciplinary research, because of the inability or unwillingness to move away from or modify the traditional Field of Research (FoR) codes;

·         fails to recognise Australian Indigenous research; and

·         is leading to the closure of a number of Australian academic journals, particularly in the humanities and social sciences.     

We urge you to engage in meaningful dialogue with university staff and their representatives to deal with the identified flaws of the ERA before commencing the 2012 exercise. 

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