Excellence in Research for Australia

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Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) is Australia's national research evaluation framework, developed and administered by the Australian Research Council (ARC). The first full round of ERA occurred in 2010, and subsequent rounds followed in 2012, 2015 and 2018. A round was scheduled for 2023, but in September 2022 the ARC announced that this would be postponed as they were transitioning the ERA process to a more robust and data driven model.^[1]

In addition to the Higher Education Research Data Collection, which collects statistics about research in Australia, the ERA collects itemised data, with all research classified according to the Field of Research (FOR) classification scheme used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. ERA relies on committees of academic experts to assess and rate research on a 1 to 5 scale (up to the 2018 round), by field of research and by university, and using a mix of assessment methods appropriate to the academic field being assessed.