Annual Publication Collection

There are three key purposes of this annual exercise:

1. JCU Annual Publications: Data relating to JCU affiliated outputs from the annual collection are used for one of the Divisions operational performance target (OPT) for research.
2. Publication metrics are used in setting benchmarks for the Research Performance Model which is used in academic promotions.
3. Reducing the workload around collection of publication data required for ERA reporting.

All ERA eligible publications published in the previous year are collected. For academic promotions and for ERA, affiliation of the author on the publication is irrelevant so provided the output falls into one of the eligible categories and it has been published in the relevant year, then we are request that the output be deposited into the publication repository, ResearchOnline@JCU.

The JCU Annual Publication collection is a subset of the annual collection and is based around the old Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) publications collection. Only outputs by staff, adjuncts and HDR students with a JCU affiliation are considered for this collection and the collection is limited to the traditional research output component of the ERA eligible publications – research books (A1),chapters in research book (B1), refereed journal articles (C1), full paper refereed conference papers (E1).

Reports are distributed via email to Colleges and Research Directorates in December (with updated reports in February and April) to allow research administration teams to review the material already identified in the university’s publication repository, ResearchOnline@JCU. This email will contain the dates for final submission to ResearchOnline@JCU to guarantee inclusion in the annual collection.  The report consists of two documents:

• A PDF outlining the publications that have been identified as being eligible for the JCU publication collection.
• A spreadsheet listing for each researcher their ERA-eligible publications currently present in ResearchOnline@JCU for the relevant year and an indicator as to whether the output will be eligible for the JCU publication collection.

We request the research administration teams to distribute the reports to their staff and HDR students and encourage them to identify any missing publications and to ensure that all their outputs are deposited into ResearchOnline@JCU as soon as possible.

The ResearchOnline@JCU team process the publications and notify Research Information that the dataset is complete. Final data clean up and eligibility checks for the various collections are performed. Finally, the research performance data is generated and updated in the Research Data Performance portal and the data for the OPT research metrics are supplied to Quality, Planning and Analytics.

The research performance model and the JCU publication collection uses data based on weighted publications. Publication weights are as follows:

Weighted Publication Counts

Weighted research publication counts are calculated by summing the weighted value of the research publications. Weighted research counts are used in the Research Performance Model.

Publication Points

Publication Points per author are calculated by dividing the weighted value of the output by the number of authors; the points are then aggregated by the affiliation of the author e.g. publication points for a division are the sum of all publication points for authors who have been affiliated with a unit belong to that division in ResearchOnline@JCU.

• Field of Research (FoR)
• Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)