ERA results for mathematical sciences in Australia

The 2010 ERA (Excellence in Research Australia) results were released by the ARC on 31 January 2011. Comprehensive reports are available from the ARC ERA 2010 webpage. Forty-one tertiary institutions submitted research outputs to be evaluated. Out of these, 17 did not receive an assessment in the mathematical sciences. This means that these 17 institutions [...]

ARC releases consultation paper on its peer review process

The Australian Research Council has released a consultation paper on its peer review process; the consultation period runs until October 19.  One of the proposals is to increase the weight of specialist reviewers, rather than focusing on other metrics such as track record.  This seems like a promising idea (and is supported by the AAS [...]

2010 ICM speakers

The list of plenary and sectional speakers for the International Congress of Mathematicians on 19-27 August, 2010 in Hyderabad, India is now available.  Among the 171 sectional speakers are two Australian-based mathematicians, Norman Dancer (for the PDE section, at U. Sydney) and Brendan McKay (for the Combinatorics section, at ANU), as well as Australian-born Mark [...]

Clay–Mahler lecture tour for 2009

The schedule for the Clay-Mahler lecture tour is now available.  This is a series of public lectures, colloquia, and specialist lectures at several across Australia by Mohammed Abouzaid, Danny Calegari, and myself, from Aug 3 – Oct 9.  They are being supported by the Clay Mathematical Institute, the Australian Mathematical Society, and the Australian Mathematical [...]

Australian Research Council ERA rules may work against multi-disciplinary research

In an article by Guy Healy in the Australian today entitled “Alarm at Australian Research Council ‘restrictions’“, Peter Hall discusses the federal Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) initiative, raising the concern that the requirement that research be assigned to at most three research codes may result in multi-disciplinary work not being assessed properly. Peter discussed [...]

French scientists revolt against government reforms

As reported in Nature, French academics are going on a “permanent strike” to protest a government reform proposal that would allow university administrators to have more freedom in determining how teaching, research, and service will be used to evaluate faculty, although some national safeguards and guidelines will remain.  There is also opposition to a related [...]

Australian Laureate Fellowships

Senator Kim Carr, the federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, has recently announced a Discovery Australian Laureate Fellowships program to attract outstanding researchers and research groups both in Australia and abroad.  This program, which is being funded with $239 million for the first five years and run by the ARC, replaces the existing [...]

Journal Ranking — the Second Incarnation

Australian academia is again in the throes of a journal ranking exercise.  We went through this last year in preparation for the previous government’s Research Quality Framework (RQF), but the new government wants to redo things for its Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA).  Again the journals must be placed into four tiers — the [...]

Citation statistics

There is an interesting new report “Citation statistics“, jointly produced by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), International Council of Industrial and Applied Mathematics (ICIAM), and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS), on the use and abuse of various citation statistics (such as impact factors and h-indices) as proxies for research quality.  (One of the authors, [...]