Research data & reporting

The data and information we collect about research funding, expenditure, publications and VU research student completions enables us to recognise research achievements. It informs decisions about the ongoing investment in research and supports the Australian Research Council's Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative.

The Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative was developed to assess research quality in higher education by evaluating research in eight discipline clusters. The information helps the Australian Government identify internationally competitive and emerging areas of research for further investment.

Research data collection and reporting

Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) is an annual return submitted to the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR). The return contains information on VU research income and publication activity that, together with higher degree research student completions, is used by government to allocate research block grants to universities.

We use HERDC data in the VU Research Activity Index to track work in progress and support and recognise research achievements.

Research Activity Index

The Research Activity Index (RAI) is an objective measure of the research activity of staff at VU. The RAI incorporates external research funding, research publications and higher degree by research student completions achieved over a 3 year assessment window. Other significant research outcomes can also be included.

New academic staff are able to obtain recognition for research outputs produced at other institutions.

RAI can be viewed via the research data portal (requires VU Staff LDAP login).

Research Data Portal

The VU research data portal allows researchers to view and record information on most aspects of research activity - including ERA data, current research funding and applications, ethics approvals and applications and RAI scores.

Research Bibliography and Institutional Publications Repository

VU research publications are collated in our research bibliography. Many of these publications are also available through our open-access publications repository.