Gaming the ERA is a Snap -- Improving Peer Review Would take Effort and Nous. (December 12, 2012)

With the release of ERA2012 just under a week ago a few critics are beginning to make their views known, although the CEO of the Australian Research Council, Aidan Byrne, certainly isn't one of them.

According to Tony Peacock, chief executive of the Cooperative Research Centres Association, the ERA is too detailed, too time consuming, too expensive and comes too often and suggested the next one be put off until 2016 or 2017.

And according to The Australian's Julie Hare and Andrew Trounson, Glyn Davis, vice-chancellor of The University of Melbourne and chair of Universities Australia, believes there isn't much gaming of the ERA but he sees "churn in the system" with high-performing researchers moving between institutions for no overall net gain to Australian university research.

Merlin Crossley, dean of science at the University of NSW strongly disagrees. He argues in today's HES that there is no question universities are gaming the system to hide poor quality results: "Every university will want to optimise its ERA results. One obvious way to game the system is to hide poor quality outputs that might drag down the average by scattering them across many codes which never reach the assessment threshold of 50 publications. The smaller you are, the easier it is."

So how should we take the viewpoint of Ms Hare and Mr Trounson that: "Perhaps one of the most surprising trends of the 2012 ERA is the almost universal shift upward in quality, with much fewer 1* and and 2* recorded, along with a much larger aggregate gain in 3* to 5* even though there were 100 fewer units of assessment. Tongue in cheek?

On the other hand usefully improving the peer review systems of the ARC and NHMRC would take serious and dedicated international interaction by Australia's... best and brightest?