ERA

Analysis and Comment (13)

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Australia’s boom investment conditions will begin tailing off by 2014, according to a Deloitte Access Economics report – so what does this mean for current labour shortages?

No boom without bust: a cautionary note about mining and employment

By Michael Barry, Griffith University

Much public discussion around the current mining boom focuses on the lack of qualified staff to fill an expanding employment market. But yesterday’s report by Deloitte Access Economics warning that the…
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How best to quantify the performance of Australian researchers? Storyvillegirl

Strength in numbers: do ERA rankings add up for universities?

By Matthew Bailes, Swinburne University of Technology

The Excellence in Research for Australia Initiative (ERA) is the federal government’s latest attempt to quantify the “excellence” (or otherwise) of Australian researchers. And just a few short weeks ago…
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Bureaucracy is stymieing academic engagement. StripeyAnne

Untangling red tape to turn academics into public intellectuals

By Dennis Altman, La Trobe University

The idea that universities should return to their “core business” of teaching and research has become a favourite mantra of vice chancellors. It is reinforced by increasing evaluations imposed by Canberra…
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Universities already stockpile academic papers so they can report their output to the government. But stockpiling the wrong version of the paper can restrict their right to make the paper available on open access. Flickr/Gideon Burton

How one small fix could open access to research

By Danny Kingsley

Providing equitable access to the findings of scholarly research is an expensive and vexed business, as many recent stories here on The Conversation have highlighted. Open access offers a way to freely…
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Frustration with copyright restrictions placed on scholarly work in many journals has helped fuel the Creative Commons and Open Access movements. Flickr/TilarX

Copyright or copywrong? How journals control access to research

By Tom Cochrane, Queensland University of Technology

Back in 1991, in the very earliest days of the internet, a group of high energy physicists began sharing their findings on a Los Alamos-based online archive called Arxiv. Their early experiments in the…
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A growing number of academic institutions are building free online databases of their scholarly output. But publication in a big name academic journal still holds cachet for most academics. Flickr/mandiberg

Explainer: Open access vs traditional academic journal publishers

By Stephen Cramond, University of Melbourne

As the cost of accessing academic journal articles increases, a growing number of academic institutions are building publicly accessible databases of scholarly work. But how much of a threat to the traditional…
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How does the high cost of academic journal subscriptions impact the developing world? Flickr/Book Aid International

How academic journals price out developing countries

By Adam Habib, University of Johannesburg

Universities libraries in the developed world are struggling to pay academic journal subscription costs — so how can universities in developing countries hope to pay? In this Q+A, Professor Adam Habib…
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Publishing practices in the biomedical and social sciences commonly fails to conform to Australian codes of practice. AAP

Cracking the code of ethical research practices

By Jackie Street and Annette Joy Braunack-Mayer

In February, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr said Australian taxpayers could be confident the research activities they fund meet the “highest ethical and moral standards…
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Does the cost of academic journals stymie learning? Flickr/the.Firebottle

Putting a price on knowledge: the high cost of academic journals

By Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne

The phrase ‘publish or perish’ is familiar to all academics, who face enormous pressure to have their work featured in the top academic journals. Career progression, job security and pay rises can depend…
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Kim Carr has canned the journal rankings system: but what should be next? AAP

Why the ERA had to change and what we should do next

By Tim Mazzarol, University of Western Australia and Geoffrey Norman Soutar, University of Western Australia

There was much celebrating around Australia’s university campuses when the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr announced changes to the “Excellence in Research for…
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When is comes to research, it seems quantity has become much more important than quality. Flickr/Iscan

How ‘publish or perish’ is ruining finance education

By Parmendra Sharma, Griffith University

Imagine the following conversation between a finance academic and his or her supervisor during an annual performance review: Academic: So, do you think I am ready for a promotion? Supervisor: Well, I…
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The university funding system discourages research on volunteers like these men who are risking their lives to help their community. Flickr/Rob Down Under

In universities obsessed with research here’s what falls between the cracks

By Bronwen Dalton, University of Technology, Sydney

In Australian universities at the moment research is everything. They obsess over the rankings in the new ERA system which measures research performance. For academics publishing in the top journals isn…

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