The Australian Research Council has hired Clarivate to analyse performance data for next year’s Excellence for Research in Australia IV

Clarivate will provide ERA expert panels with citation data to assess the impact of journal articles, as part of an overall assessment of research performance. (The ARC is at pains to point out that disciplines where peer review is what matters in reflecting reputation are not dependent on analytic exercises.)

Lat night there were suggestions in research circles that universities who used another research analytics package would now need to purchase Clarivate’s, bit not so says Leanne Harvey, the ARC’s general manager.

Universities will not be required to purchase a Clarivate analysis package to participate in the ERA 2018 evaluation. The citation provider has been contracted to provide a service to universities and to the ARC that does not require universities to purchase proprietary data or software. The process is the same as in previous ERA rounds.

Clarivate (what was Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property and Science), provides the bibliometric base for the Academic Ranking of World Universities, published last week.