Report card highlights Australia's research strengths and weaknesses

The most comprehensive report on the state of Australian research output was released today by the Federal Government, showing that Australian researchers produce world class work in some areas, but are falling behind in others.

Australian researchers particularly excel in immunology, cardiovascular medicine, physics, quantum physics, mathematical physics, theoretical and computational chemistry, horticulture, aerospace engineering, evolutionary biology and biotechnology.

In each of these areas, Australian institutions scored 4.5/5 or above, with a score 4 of indicating output that is above world standard and 5 indicating it is well above world standard.

By comparison, some areas scored 2/5 or below, indicating the research is below world standard, including public health and health services, education, applied economics, commerce, management and tourism, policy and administration, political science and sociology.

Overall, the category of biological sciences was rated as 3.1/5, suggesting output is marginally above world standard.

The report is the most comprehensive every conducted on Australian research and took three years of consultation to produce.

It surveyed over 300,000 individual research outputs, ranging from journal articles to book chapters to conference papers. It assessed 55,000 researchers across eight discipline clusters.

It also evaluated individual universities on their research output in separate disciplines, and found that ANU, University of Melbourne, University of Queensland and the University of New South Wales were among the top when it came to life sciences.

The ERA report was not only commissioned by the federal government to produce a report card on Australian research, but to help guide future funding decisions.

“The Australian Government invests billions of dollars in research each year," said Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr.

"ERA gives the Australian taxpayer assurance that their money is being invested wisely and gives the Government a clear idea of the research areas we need to focus on for improvement and continued excellence,” he said.

“The ERA 2010 National Report shows us that we have a large number of research strengths — we should be very proud of this. Our performance in areas like history, immunology and quantum physics is truly outstanding.

“But the report also shows we need to do better in some areas. This is to be expected when you conduct an all encompassing assessment of a country's research effort in universities. The evidence the ERA evaluation has given us will help us find ways to improve."

The full Excellence in Research for Australia report can be downloaded from the Australian Research Council website.