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Articles on ERA

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Research must have an impact – but what’s the best way to measure it? www.shutterstock.com

Watt report suggests financial incentives for measuring research impact

A government report on research funding and policy has recommended introducing a funding incentive to ensure university research benefits society and business.
We need researchers to collaborate with industry if we’re to be an innovation nation. Shutterstock

The ‘lucky country’ needs to be re-invented

An emphasis on innovation is great, but we need genuine reforms to universities and tax incentives if we’re to promote collaboration between research and industry.
Citations, bibliometrics, “publish or perish”: why must we constantly assess research? Shutterstock

Explainer: how and why is research assessed?

Governments and taxpayers deserve to know that their money is being spent on something worthwhile to society. Individuals and groups who are making the greatest contribution to science and to the community…
UNSW Vice-Chancellor Fred Hilmer at the National Press Club in Canberra. AAP/Alan Porritt

Hilmer: unis should copy approach of mining industry

Universities must adopt the campaign tactics of the mining industry if they are to have any chance against oppressive government regulation and fee structures, says the University of New South Wales Vice-Chancellor…
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

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…
How best to quantify the performance of Australian researchers? Storyvillegirl

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

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…
Do we need new vocabulary for measuring the “engagement”, “use”, “relevance” and “appropriateness” of research? spettacolopuro

The ‘impact’ of research carries weight (but ripples matter more)

What has been the impact of the invention of the telescope? What has been the impact of Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, or the splitting of the atom? Yes, that’s right: the idea of measuring the…
Bureaucracy is stymieing academic engagement. StripeyAnne

Untangling red tape to turn academics into public intellectuals

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…
Do Australian universities suffer from an overload of auditing and metrics-based assessment? Are vision and flexibility being stifled? Flickr/Harald Groven.

No tyranny of metrics: scrapped Australian plan now a revolution in research assessment in England

Visiting British expert David Sweeney could have star appeal for academics frustrated by the bureaucratic inflexibility of Australia’s research auditing system and metrics-based assessments blind to the…
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

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…
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

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…
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

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…
How does the high cost of academic journal subscriptions impact the developing world? Flickr/Book Aid International

How academic journals price out developing countries

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…
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

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…
ANU’s new Digital Collections database aims to make scholarly work freely accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Flickr/justiceimages

Making knowledge free: ANU launches open access research database

As the cost of accessing academic journals soars, the Australian National University has launched a new free online database that allows anyone with an internet connection to read the latest scholarly…

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