Tim Cahill explains why expert review keeps ERA state of art

 Dr Cahill worked on the creation of the metrics that are the basis of the Australian Research Council’s research assessments. In a new paper, reproduced in CMM, he looks at three big ideas in bibliometry, developed since ERA was created.

* short time-frames for research evaluation screens work which will be influential over time

* gender bias in peer-review impacts on citation metrics

* focus on peer review and citation metrics narrows what is researched

But such findings do not diminish the effectiveness of ERA, which includes expert evaluation and as such can be updated to address new findings; “The prominence of expert review means that such updates to our understanding can be easily incorporated into the approach. All that is required is that committee members be made aware of such nuances to the indicators, and take appropriate measures,” he writes.