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2/15/2011Australia’s research strength lays in science, according tofirst national assesmentblogs.lse.ac.uk /impactofsocialsciences/2011/02/15/australias-research-strength-lays-in-science-according-to-national-assesment/This week THE brings us the results of Australia’s first ever national research assessment, which foundresearch in the sciences stronger than in the humanities and social sciences.The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) ranked biotechnology, earth sciences, physical sciences, chemicalsciences, and environmental sciences as the top 5 fields of disciplines; history was the only humanities or socialsciences discipline to crack the top 10. The national report outlines the indicators used; a mix of rankled outlets,citation analysis, research outputs, commercialization income and ‘esteem measures,’ however the executivedirector of the Australian Academy of the Humanities believes that the sciences drew more heavily on quantitativemetrics while the social science s and humanities drew upon peer review, which generate ‘generally moreconservative’ outcomes. The Australian newspaper has produced a league table based on an average of eachuniversity’s scores, available here.Critics argue that the assessment and rankings unfairly favour the prestigious Group of 8 universities and isdistorted by the much greater proportion of funding the Australian Research Council allocates to physical sciencesCopyright © The Author (or The Authors) - Unless otherwise stated, this work is licensed under a CreativeCommons Attribution Unported 3.0 License.1/1

Australia’s research strength lays in science, according to first national assesment

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