Research Performance

Research Active

A “Research Active” individual is understood as being someone who pursues research on an ongoing basis, as a major focus of their academic activity. The Faculty of Science and Engineering follows the standard Macquarie University Definition of Research Active (not all faculties do this). The Faculty office requests periodic reports from the Research Office in order to collate the Research Active spreadsheet, so it is important to make sure your publications in IRIS are up to date.

Meeting the Research Active Definition is a requirement for listing on the Macquarie University Supervisor Register (MQSR).

Research Productive

The Research Productive definition for the Faculty of Science and Engineering has been set with the intention of meeting the goal outlined in the Macquarie University Strategic Framework 2015-2014, to Accelerate world-leading research performance, specifically to increase the number and proportion of research-productive staff.

To be considered Research Productive, staff in the Faculty of Science and Engineering are expected to achieve the required performance in at least two of the three areas of Research Productivity: Publications, Research Grants and HDR supervision, as outlined in the Publications, Research Grants and HDR Supervision & Completion sections of the FSE Research Productive document. Staff should aim to meet these minimum standards, but it is expected that many staff will aim to exceed these benchmarks. Indicative measures which reflect high productivity are also provided for reference.

HERDC

The Higher Education Research Data Collection program is run by the Australian Government Department of Education and Training. Until 2015 HERDC collected from all Higher Education Providers information about both research income earned and research publications produced, however the research publication component was dropped in the 2016 return, which means that information for 2015 publications was not submitted to the Department.

The University is still collecting information on publications for internal use, using the specifications set out in the 2015 HERDC specifications for the collection of 2014 data. Each year, the number of verified publications will be totalled as they stand at the end of June, and this will be the reported publications number for the purposes of University output statistics.

ERA

Excellence in Research Australia is an initiative of the Australian Research Council and is run every three years. ERA is a very data intensive exercise and checking for the 2018 ERA round has already begun. The internal summary report for Macquarie University gives a a breakdown of ratings by department. ERA is an assessment of quality rather than output.