Research performance data & reporting
The data and information we collect about research funding, expenditure, publications and VU research student completions enables us to recognise research achievements. It informs decisions about the ongoing investment in research and supports the Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative.
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Excellence in Research for Australia
The Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative was developed to assess research quality in higher education by evaluating research in eight discipline clusters. The information helps the Australian Government identify internationally competitive and emerging areas of research for further investment.
Research data collection and reporting
Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) is an annual return submitted to the Department of Education. The return contains information on VU research income and publication activity that, together with higher degree research student completions, is used by government to allocate research block grants to universities.
We use HERDC data in the VU Research Activity Index to track work in progress and support and recognise research achievements.
Research Activity Index
The Research Activity Index (RAI) is used at VU as a measure of research activity. The RAI incorporates research funding, research publications and supervision of higher degree by research student completions achieved over a 3 year assessment window. Other significant research outcomes can also be included. The RAI incorporates weightings designed to strongly drive research quality and collaboration. Staff at different academic levels are expected to achieve distinct benchmarks. A portion of RAI data is used to inform academic workloads as well as being used in a variety of other contexts.
New academic staff are able to obtain recognition for research outputs produced at other institutions.
Note: A new policy - Measuring Individual Research Activity (MIRA or known as MORA) - was released in replacement of the previous Research Activity Index (RAI) policy. Procedures are currently being developed.
Institutional Repository
VU research publications are available through our open-access publications repository.
Contact us
If you would like further information about research performance and data management, contact:
Ms Cora Ng
Research Information Coordinator
Phone: + 61 3 9919 5354
Email: cora.ng@vu.edu.au