Research results positive for “middle of the pack”

It should be easy in the future to ensure that the Minister’s (Kim Carr) oft repeated mantra of funding only excellent research occurs in practise no matter where that research is located write Frances Shannon and Stephen Parker The results of ERA may have been largely predictable in awarding high rankings to larger, older universities, but there are plenty of positives for smaller, up-and-coming institutions. The university league tables that were produced – hot on the heels of the release of the National Report – from the aggregate ERA results told us the obvious in most cases but also illustrated some movement in performance, especially in the middle of the pack. It was reasonably predictable that the Group of Eight universities would take the top spots; indeed if they had not there would need to have been even more soul searching. If one considers some of the main drivers of performance such as age, mission over the lifetime of the institution, volume, the presence of a medical school and the like then again the aggregate outcomes of breadth and depth were no surprise to most in the sector. ERA, however, had as its objective to identify research excellence wherever it occurred rather than to rank universities against each other. If one delves into the details of the outcome tables it is clear that pockets of research excellence in many of the newer universities were acknowledged as performing well above world standard. James Cook University, for example, received an outstanding score for its Environmental Sciences research, Swinburne did equally well in Astronomical and Space Sciences and Southern Cross will be excited about its performance in geochemistry. The outcomes of ERA should give us confidence that pockets of excellence will be acknowledged across the board. So one lesson for aspiring, young universities is that these good results were most likely achieved through active concentration of resources and recruitment of the best possible researchers into selected research disciplines. No doubt there will be much agonising on whether fewer areas of excellence or more areas of average performance will be the best strategy to achieve improvement in ERA. Much may turn on the rules governing funding consequences of ERA results, because presumably such consequences will progressively be added in future rounds. New universities should use the information provided by ERA wisely as part of a suite of decision making factors to determine where their research efforts would be best placed to achieve excellence and impact. There is often a perception that researchers in less renowned institutions find it more difficult to attract research funding. The identification of areas of research excellence in many universities should give those researchers valuable ammunition in the war to attract research funding. It would be interesting to track the relationship between the ERA scores in a specific discipline and the distribution of competitive peer-reviewed funding. It should be easy in the future to ensure that the Minister’s oft-repeated mantra of funding only excellent research occurs in practise no matter where that research is located. Another welcome finding for the many young universities who have developing research strengths in non-traditional and inter-disciplinary areas is the observation that the highest ranked research in some of these areas occurs outside the Go8. It is not surprising, for example, that all of the Go8 universities scored a 5 in Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, an outcome that no doubt relates to the size and age of their medical school. Looking beyond the traditional, however, reveals significant concentration of performance in areas such as Environmental Sciences, Built Environment and Design and Allied Health in universities outside the Go8. The ability of a new, smaller institution to seize opportunities to be the innovators in new and emerging disciplines addressing the so called “wicked” challenges facing society will be the future key to being recognised as a leading research institution. The phenomenon of newer, small universities concentrating efforts and coming forward as innovators in emerging disciplines poses a conundrum when we consider the question of whether an institution with credibility in only small pockets of research should be accredited with university status. In other words, what scale needs to be achieved to warrant the status of a university? The strategy of becoming highly focused might be advantageous in ERA rankings (the Melbourne College of Divinity ranked equal 11th with Griffith on the basis of a ranking in only one cluster) but would certainly not be beneficial to the whole sector or graduate educational outcomes. The older universities have had the luxury of 150 years or so to develop their breadth and depth. Newer universities, on the other hand, have had to develop much faster in the current globally competitive environment, and to juggle the challenges of strategically growing depth and breadth against the backdrop of a new research landscape characterised by multi-disciplinarity and the need to be innovative to make a mark. It is critical that Australia considers what it means to be a university and only confers that status on institutions that meet rigorous criteria not only of depth and breadth, but also innovation. For example, the development of new forms of teaching-only tertiary institutions such as a reinvented polytechnic model, where excellent, innovative teaching becomes the benchmark, may serve to provide tertiary education for a greater percentage of the population on a more affordable business model, leaving universities to pursue a mission of pursuing excellence in research and research-led education. There will no doubt be many quibbles about the details of the measurements used in the first ERA, and the sector should aim to inform the development of better measurement tools to generate more robust outcomes for the future. Concerns in regard to assignment of journals to Fields of Research generating a lack of flexibility to present a coherent picture from a group of high performing researchers in an area that crosses disciplinary boundaries are more acute for universities with small but outstanding research groups. At the University of Canberra, our high performing Environmental Science group received recognition of their national and international standing in ERA. But a number of their very best outputs were forced to be reported under the biological sciences cluster due to the coding of the journals in which their research – topics relating to Environmental Sciences – was published. One has to wonder whether the UC Environmental Sciences group would have achieved an even better score if all relevant outputs from that research group had been assessed together. It may be of value to consider more reporting flexibility. The ARC has agreed to consider the matter of applied measures for ERA 2012. We support this. We would welcome more measures of impact on government policy, social change and the community. It may even be appropriate to develop two independent measures for research activity in our universities, one that measures academic impact and one that measures applied impact with each institution having an agreed balance of the two measures. However, these should not be seen as mutually exclusive and application should always be backed by rigorous research that would stand up in the measures already applied in ERA 2010. n Professor Frances Shannon is pro vice-chancellor, research at the University of Canberra and Professor Stephen Parker is the university’s vice-chancellor.