The Australian Research Council has released its fourth report on the state of Australian university research, the 2018-19 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) National Report.
It provides a snapshot of the quality and breadth of university research in this country as well as longitudinal trends in research activity.
The bottom line: Australia's research is in good shape by international standards and has improved across a range of research fields over the 14 years covered by ERA to date.
The assessment was done across three broad indicators: the quality of the research; the generated research output and income; and the application of research.
In this it did not only capture traditional research outputs such as journal articles, although these accounted for the bulk of the research outputs, but also non-traditional products, such as life performances of creative work.
In a nutshell, the 2018 ERA looked at the research from 42 Australian institutions produced in the six years to 2016 (data on research income and application were collated for the years 2014-16.)
The data universities provided was captured and aggregated across two levels of Units of Evaluation (UoE) representing either broader fields of disciplines (two-digit research fields) or more specific discipline fields (four-digit research fields).
ERA assessed 2603 of such UoEs, and rated the quality of the research units based on a five point scale ranging from 'well below world standard' to 'well above world standard'.
According to the report, 66% of the UoEs were above or well above world standard, while at the other end of the scale only 10% were found below or well below world standard. The evaluation also revealed that 26% of UoEs improved their 2015 rating in 2018.
However, the canvassed performances indicate significant variations between disciplines. For example, more than 90% of UoEs assigned to the disciplines 'Technology', 'Mathematical Sciences' and 'Medical and Health Sciences' were rated 'above' and 'well above' world standard, while in a number of other disciplines, such as 'Studies in Human Society', 'Education' and 'Economics', less than 30% of UoEs achieved this high rating.
A notable finding of this ERA round is, though, that across a number of indicators the assessed research output has improved. For example, between ERA 2010 and ERA 2018 the number of journal articles and the number of patents almost doubled (Journal articles: 206,816 to 376,337; patents: 671 to 1,282.
"This report shows that not only has the volume of research output increased, but the quality has been maintained or improved. In addition, the number of units of evaluation has increased, reflecting increasing depth and breadth of Australia’s research," ARC chief executive officer Professor Sue Thomas wrote in her forward to the report.Over the coming year the ARC is expected to release additional analysis of the data, providing further insights into the state of Australian university research.