University research findings open to gaming and fraud – Expert

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) data which was released by the Australian Research Council in March is being gamed by participants and in some cases actual fraud appears to be involved, said sociologist and administration expert Paul Henman, writes Robert Bolton for Australian Financial Review.

The ERA is an expensive, labour-intensive exercise lacking in transparency, says Associate Professor Paul Henman, principal research fellow at the University of Queensland's Centre for Policy Futures. The University of Queensland associate professor is not a lone voice speaking out against the rankings, which showed 66% of Australian universities were ‘above’ or ‘well above’ world standard in 2018 compared to 57% in 2015. A senior representative of the university system, who asked not to be named, said the ERA process was more about branding and publicity than producing useful data to compare university research.

Henman said the universities could game the process because they decided which categories their research was assessed under. In one case, a university had reclassified research in a field where they were performing strongly so it could be submitted in a category where they were weaker in the hope of lifting overall performance.
Full report on the Australian Financial Review site