What are the refinements for ERA 2012?

On 30 May 2011, Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, announced improvements to the ERA methodology, based on feedback received and experience gained from the ERA 2010 evaluations. These are:

• The withdrawal of the Ranked Outlets indicator and the introduction of a refined journal indicator that does not use prescriptive ranks.
• Improved capability to accommodate interdisciplinary research - in an extension of the arrangement successfully trialled in 2010 for the mathematical sciences, institutions will be permitted to code a journal article with significant content (66% or greater) not represented by the journal's FoR(s) to the FoR code that best describes the content.
• For peer review disciplines, an increase in the low volume threshold to 50 apportioned weighted outputs, bringing it in line with the threshold for citation disciplines (50 apportioned indexed articles).
• A change in the rules for the attribution of patents, plant breeders' rights and registered designs to allow them to be submitted when they are granted to eligible researchers (as well as when they are granted to institutions).
• The modification of fractional staff eligibility requirements so that staff employed at 0.4 FTE or greater are automatically eligible, while staff below this threshold are eligible where affiliation is shown (through use of a by-line, for instance).

More detail is here.