Australian research offices work across a small set of national systems that don’t map cleanly onto one another: the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) runs its schemes through a platform called Sapphire, the Australian Research Council (ARC) runs its own separate portal, and universities separately report research income every year through the Higher Education Research Data Collection (HERDC) to help determine Commonwealth block-grant funding. Layered on top of that is the question of national research-quality evaluation, where Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) was discontinued mid-cycle and has not yet been replaced with a finalised successor. This guide covers what each system actually does, what HERDC reporting requires, where national research evaluation currently stands, and how DECRA eligibility — including the Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence (ROPE) framework applicants most often misunderstand — actually works.
For the funding-body relationships behind all of this (which agency funds what, and how the ARC, NHMRC and Medical Research Future Fund divide the landscape), see Australian Research Funding: How the ARC, NHMRC, and MRFF Fit Together. This guide assumes that context and goes one level deeper, into the administrative systems and reporting mechanics research offices actually operate day to day.
The Australian research-administration system landscape
These are the systems an Australian research office deals with most often, what each one is for, and who runs it.
| System | Run by | What it’s for |
|---|---|---|
| Sapphire | NHMRC | Online grants-management portal for NHMRC schemes — personnel profiles, applications, institutional certification, and post-award reporting. Replaced NHMRC’s older RGMS platform. |
| RMS (Research Management System) | ARC | The ARC’s equivalent portal for its National Competitive Grants Program — Discovery Program (including DECRA) and Linkage Program applications and reporting. |
| HERDC | Australian Government Department of Education | Annual collection of university research income (and historically research-output) data, used as an input to Commonwealth research block-grant funding. |
| Australian Competitive Grants Register (ACGR) | Department of Education | The list of grant schemes whose income counts as HERDC Category 1 (“nationally competitive”) income — ARC and NHMRC schemes are on it. |
| ERA (discontinued) / successor framework | ARC | Discipline-level national research-quality evaluation. The scheduled 2023 round did not proceed; a replacement framework is under development and not yet finalised — see below. |
| GrantConnect | Australian Government (whole-of-government) | The central publication point for Commonwealth grant opportunities and forecast opportunities across all portfolios, not just ARC/NHMRC. |
NHMRC Sapphire: what it is and what you actually do in it
Sapphire is NHMRC’s web-based grants-management system. It is where researchers and administering institutions handle the full lifecycle of an NHMRC scheme application, and it replaced NHMRC’s older RGMS platform. In practice, a research office’s work in Sapphire falls into four recurring tasks:
- Personnel profile and track record. Each researcher maintains a personal profile in Sapphire — qualifications, positions held, and the track-record information NHMRC’s peer reviewers use to assess an application, including (for schemes that use it) a Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence statement of the kind described below for DECRA-style assessment logic. This profile is reused across applications rather than re-entered each time.
- Application preparation. Chief Investigators (CIs) build the application itself in Sapphire against the scheme’s specific application form — the fields, attachments and word limits differ by scheme (Ideas Grant, Investigator Grant, Synergy Grant, DECRA and so on), so the research office’s role is largely making sure the right scheme-specific rules are applied consistently across the institution’s applicants.
- Institutional certification. Before an application can be submitted, the administering institution must certify it in Sapphire — confirming the institution will administer the funding, that the application meets eligibility and integrity requirements, and that the necessary approvals (ethics, for human research) are in place or will be before funds are drawn down. This certification step is the research office’s main gatekeeping function in the system.
- Post-award reporting. Once funded, progress reports, variations, and final reports are lodged through Sapphire rather than by email or a separate portal, which is why research offices need Sapphire access maintained for the full life of an award, not just at application time.
Sapphire is specific to NHMRC. The ARC runs a separate system (RMS) for Discovery and Linkage Program schemes such as Future Fellowships and DECRA — the two systems are not interchangeable and a researcher who works across both funders will hold separate profiles in each. For background on the NHMRC as an organisation and how its schemes relate to the ARC’s, see National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) and Australian Research Council (ARC). Individual scheme mechanics — budget structure, eligibility, team composition — are covered separately: see NHMRC Ideas Grant, NHMRC Investigator Grant, NHMRC Personnel Support Package (PSP), and NHMRC Synergy Grants.
HERDC: what universities report, and why it matters for block funding
HERDC (Higher Education Research Data Collection) is the annual data collection through which Australian universities report their research income to the Australian Government Department of Education. It matters to research administrators for a specific reason: HERDC-reported research income is one of the key inputs the Department uses to calculate a university’s share of Commonwealth research block-grant funding for the following year — so a research office’s HERDC return is not just a compliance exercise, it has a direct financial consequence for the institution.
Eligible research income is reported against four categories:
- Category 1 — Australian competitive grants. Income from schemes listed on the Australian Competitive Grants Register (ACGR) — this is where ARC and NHMRC scheme income is reported, because those schemes are nationally competitive and peer-reviewed. Category 1 income is generally weighted most heavily in downstream funding formulas, which is why correctly matching an award to its ACGR-listed scheme matters.
- Category 2 — Other public sector research income. Non-competitive research income from Commonwealth, state, territory or local government sources that isn’t on the ACGR.
- Category 3 — Industry and other research income. Contract research, consultancies and other research income from industry, not-for-profits, and other non-government sources.
- Category 4 — Cooperative Research Centres (CRC) income. Income specifically attributable to CRC Program participation.
Because the categorisation affects funding outcomes, research offices typically run their own internal certification and audit process before a HERDC return is submitted — checking that income has been correctly attributed to a category (and, for Category 1, to the correct ACGR-listed scheme), that it hasn’t been double-counted across collaborating institutions, and that it meets HERDC’s own income-recognition rules. Getting the category wrong doesn’t just risk an audit finding; it can shift funding between categories in a way that’s difficult to correct after the collection year closes.
What happened to ERA, and what (if anything) has replaced it
Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) was the ARC’s periodic, discipline-level national exercise for evaluating the quality of research produced by Australian universities, run in several rounds from 2010 onward. It is no longer running. The round scheduled for 2023 did not proceed — the ARC put the exercise on hold, and its discontinuation followed the broader ARC Act Review and the Australian Universities Accord process, both of which examined whether a periodic, discipline-level evaluation exercise of ERA’s kind was still the right national mechanism for assessing research quality and impact.
As of this guide’s last check, the ARC has been reported to be developing a proposed replacement national research evaluation framework, but no finalised, relaunched framework has taken ERA’s place. Practically, this means: do not describe ERA as a live, currently-collecting exercise in institutional documentation, funding submissions, or communications with international partners who may know Australia primarily through ERA’s past outcomes — it is discontinued, not paused on a fixed timetable, and its designed successor is not yet operational. Because this is an active area of government policy that can move quickly, confirm the current status directly against the ARC’s own website (arc.gov.au) before relying on it for anything time-sensitive, rather than treating this page (or any other secondary source) as the definitive current word.
DECRA eligibility and the ROPE framework
The Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) is an ARC fellowship scheme, delivered through the Discovery Program, that funds early-career researchers to undertake a research project largely independent of the constraints of undertaking the research within an existing larger program. It sits alongside other Discovery Program schemes — Discovery Projects, Discovery Indigenous, and the Australian Laureate Fellowships — and is distinct from NHMRC’s early/mid-career mechanisms, which run through Sapphire rather than the ARC’s RMS. For a comparable ARC fellowship at a later career stage, see ARC Future Fellowship.
Two things trip applicants up more than anything else in DECRA eligibility:
- The PhD-conferral eligibility window. DECRA is restricted to researchers within a defined number of years of PhD conferral as at the scheme’s reference date (historically framed as a small number of years post-PhD). The ARC allows this window to be extended where an applicant has had documented career interruptions — parental leave, carer responsibilities, illness, or comparable disruptions — so the eligibility window is not a purely mechanical calendar calculation. Because the ARC revises the exact window and the extension mechanics scheme round to scheme round, confirm the current figures directly in the current round’s ARC Grant Guidelines before advising an applicant, rather than relying on a remembered figure from a previous round.
- ROPE — Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence. This is the framework the ARC uses to assess an applicant’s track record relative to the opportunities they have actually had, rather than in absolute or purely metrics-based terms (publication counts, raw grant income, and so on). In practice, applicants provide a statement addressing their career opportunities and any disruptions or non-standard career patterns — part-time work, career breaks, non-academic employment, teaching-heavy roles, or limited access to resources or mentoring — so that peer reviewers assess research achievements in that context rather than benchmarking everyone against a single continuous-full-time-research-career baseline. ROPE is the mechanism through which the ARC intends career interruptions and non-linear career paths to be assessed as context for track record rather than treated as a gap that simply counts against an applicant. Research offices supporting DECRA applicants generally add the most value not by writing the ROPE statement for the applicant, but by helping them identify which opportunities and constraints are genuinely relevant to disclose and by keeping the statement factual and specific rather than generic.
Because both the eligibility window and the specific ROPE assessment criteria are set out in the ARC’s Grant Guidelines for the current funding round and are revised periodically, treat the mechanics above as the general shape of the framework, and verify the current round’s specific figures and wording directly against arc.gov.au before an applicant relies on them.
NHMRC’s levels of evidence
Separately from the grants-administration systems above, “NHMRC levels of evidence” refers to NHMRC’s evidence hierarchy for grading the strength of research evidence — most commonly encountered by Australian research administrators through NHMRC-endorsed guideline development, systematic reviews, and evidence-based practice work, rather than through the grant-application process itself. NHMRC’s framework sets out evidence levels (broadly, Level I at the top for systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials, down through single RCTs, comparative and observational study designs, to case series at the lower end) that differ depending on the type of research question being asked — a hierarchy appropriate for questions about an intervention’s effectiveness looks different from one appropriate for a diagnostic-accuracy or prognostic question. Alongside the evidence levels, NHMRC’s framework also sets out separate grades of recommendation, which combine the evidence level with other factors (consistency of findings, clinical impact, generalisability, applicability to the Australian healthcare context) to arrive at an overall strength-of-recommendation grade for a guideline statement.
Two things are worth flagging for currency. First, this hierarchy has existed since NHMRC’s 2009 guidance for guideline developers and remains widely cited and reused well beyond Australia, including by other agencies’ evidence hierarchies that were modelled on it. Second, the international standard for grading evidence and recommendations has shifted substantially since 2009 toward the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach, which many guideline-development groups — including some working under NHMRC endorsement — now use instead of, or alongside, the original NHMRC levels. If you’re advising on a current guideline-development project, confirm which framework the specific guideline process actually requires rather than assuming the original 2009 levels-of-evidence structure is the only or default option.
Frequently asked questions
What is NHMRC Sapphire used for?
Sapphire is NHMRC’s online grants-management system. Researchers and administering institutions use it to maintain personnel/track-record profiles, prepare and submit applications for NHMRC schemes, certify applications institutionally before submission, and lodge post-award progress and final reports. It replaced NHMRC’s older RGMS platform.
What does HERDC stand for, and who has to report it?
HERDC stands for the Higher Education Research Data Collection. Australian universities report their eligible research income to it annually through the Department of Education, categorised into four income categories, and the collection feeds into how much Commonwealth research block-grant funding each institution receives.
Is ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia) still running?
No. The round scheduled for 2023 did not proceed, and ERA has not run since. A replacement national research evaluation framework has been reported to be under development, but as of this guide’s last check nothing finalised has replaced it — confirm current status directly against arc.gov.au before treating either ERA or a specific successor as active.
What is the ROPE framework in a DECRA application?
ROPE (Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence) is how the ARC assesses an applicant’s track record relative to the actual research opportunities they’ve had, rather than purely on absolute output metrics. Applicants provide a statement about career disruptions, part-time work, non-standard career paths and similar context so reviewers can assess achievements against opportunity rather than a single uniform benchmark.
Are NHMRC’s levels of evidence the same as GRADE?
No — they’re related but separate frameworks. NHMRC’s levels of evidence and grades of recommendation date from 2009 guidance for guideline developers. GRADE is a later, internationally-developed approach that many guideline-development groups now use instead of or alongside the original NHMRC hierarchy. Check which framework a specific current guideline process requires rather than assuming one by default.
Currency note: this guide draws on NHMRC and ARC scheme documentation and Department of Education HERDC guidance, and was last checked for currency in August 2026. Scheme-specific figures (eligibility windows, funding amounts, round dates) and the ERA-successor status change with each funding round and each government policy update — confirm them directly against nhmrc.gov.au, arc.gov.au and education.gov.au before relying on them for a live application or compliance decision.
