Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) was Australia’s national research evaluation framework, run by the Australian Research Council in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2018 — but it was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023 and has no active successor yet. The UK’s Research Excellence Framework, by contrast, is entering an active new cycle: REF 2029, with results due in December 2029 and roughly £2 billion a year of block-grant funding riding on the outcome. This piece compares how the two systems were built, evaluated outputs, and what that discontinuity means for institutions and researchers who move between the two countries.
Excellence in Research for Australia is the discontinued national research evaluation framework the Australian Research Council (ARC) ran across four completed rounds (2010–2018) before the government ended it in 2023, pending a replacement.
- What is Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)?
- What is the UK’s REF 2029?
- How do ERA and REF 2029 compare in structure and assessment units?
- How are journals and outputs evaluated under each framework?
- What should internationally mobile researchers and institutions know?
- Frequently asked questions
- What comes next for research assessment in both countries?
What is Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)?
ERA was Australia’s periodic, discipline-by-discipline audit of university research quality. The Australian Research Council ran full assessment rounds in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2018, using expert review panels and bibliometric indicators to rate research against international benchmarks by field of research (FoR).
A fifth round was scheduled for 2023, but the ARC postponed it in September 2022 while developing “a more robust and data-driven model.” That transition never produced a new exercise: as the ARC’s own evaluating-research page now states, ERA was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023, and the associated ERA Journal List is no longer active. The ARC has confirmed it is developing a proposed replacement, but as of mid-2026 no successor framework has launched — and several institutional pages online still describe ERA in the present tense, as though it remains an ongoing exercise. It does not; it is a closed, historical dataset spanning four rounds (2010–2018).
What is the UK’s REF 2029?
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing research quality across UK higher education institutions, managed by Research England on behalf of the four UK funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales), and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland. REF outcomes directly inform the allocation of around £2 billion a year in quality-related (QR) block-grant funding.
REF was first carried out in 2014, replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Following consultation decisions published by the four funding bodies in June and December 2023, the next cycle was pushed back and renamed from the originally planned REF 2028 to REF 2029, with results due in December 2029.
REF 2029 restructures assessment into three named elements: Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU, replacing the former “Outputs” element), Engagement and Impact (E&I), and a new Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) element that folds in what was piloted separately as “People, Culture and Environment.” Official REF 2029 guidance also confirms the removal of the REF 2021 minimum output requirement — institutions are no longer bound to a fixed per-researcher output count.
How do ERA and REF 2029 compare in structure and assessment units?
Both frameworks organised assessment around disciplinary groupings rather than individual researchers, but the resemblance mostly ends there. ERA used ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR) codes, assessing all eligible outputs an institution produced in a field. REF uses Units of Assessment (UoAs) aligned to subject panels and — unlike ERA — has historically asked for a selected subset of “best” outputs rather than a comprehensive sweep.
| Dimension | ERA (Australia) | REF 2029 (UK) |
|---|---|---|
| Current status | Discontinued 2023; no active cycle | Active; results due December 2029 |
| Administering body | Australian Research Council | Research England, on behalf of 4 UK funding bodies |
| Assessment unit | Field of Research (ANZSRC FoR codes) | Unit of Assessment (UoA), subject panels |
| Output scope | All eligible institutional outputs per field | Selected outputs; no fixed minimum for REF 2029 |
| Method mix | Bibliometrics (STEM-heavy fields) + peer review (HASS fields) | Predominantly expert peer review across panels |
| Completed/planned rounds | 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018 (four rounds, none since) | 2014, 2021, 2029 (next) |
| Direct funding link | Present in early rounds; not carried through by 2018 | Directly informs ~£2bn/year QR block funding |
How are journals and outputs evaluated under each framework?
ERA’s approach to journals changed significantly across its short life. The ARC’s original 2010 round ranked journals into four tiers — A*, A, B and C — a system that proved controversial for compressing disciplinary nuance into a single letter grade. Those tiered journal rankings were discontinued from the 2012 round onward, replaced by a broader mix of citation analysis and expert panel judgement. With ERA’s discontinuation, the ERA Journal List itself is no longer maintained or active.
REF 2029 takes a different route entirely: it has never used a centralised journal-ranking list. Instead, panels apply peer review to submitted outputs, supported in some panels by citation data as one input among several. The bigger structural change for REF 2029 is output volume, not journals — the REF 2021 minimum-output requirement per researcher is removed, alongside a new SPRE emphasis on institutional research culture rather than pure output counting.
- ERA relied on institution-wide bibliometric and peer-review data by field, with a journal-tier system used only in its first round.
- REF has always used panel-based peer review as its primary mechanism, with citation data as supplementary evidence in some panels only.
- Neither framework has ever operated a CASRAI-style contributor-role taxonomy for attributing authorship within submitted outputs — both assess outputs and institutional units, not individual contributor roles.
What should internationally mobile researchers and institutions know?
For researchers moving between Australia and the UK, the practical takeaway is asymmetry: one country’s national exercise is dormant, the other’s is actively gathering data for a 2029 outcome. Australian institutions have no live national assessment cycle to prepare for, though the ARC’s stated intent to develop a replacement means institutional research offices should monitor ARC announcements rather than assume the gap is permanent.
UK-bound researchers, by contrast, sit inside an active REF 2029 cycle with concrete milestones — panel recruitment, a defined census period, and December 2023 policy decisions already locking in the CKU/E&I/SPRE structure. Institutional research administration teams supporting cross-border academic staff must track both realities at once: legacy ERA data still informs Australian institutional benchmarking, while REF 2029 submission planning is a live, resourced UK project. One further caveat: because ERA’s last complete round was 2018, any “current” Australian research ranking sourced from ERA is, by definition, describing a dataset now eight years old with no refresh mechanism in place.
Frequently asked questions
What are the key changes for REF 2029?
REF 2029 restructures assessment into three elements — Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, Engagement and Impact, and a new Strategy, People and Research Environment element — and removes the REF 2021 minimum-output requirement, giving institutions more flexibility over how many outputs each researcher submits.
Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?
It is REF 2029. The exercise was originally planned as REF 2028, but the four UK funding bodies extended the timetable following their December 2023 decisions, renaming it REF 2029 with results published in December 2029.
Is ERA still used in Australia?
No. ERA was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023, and its four completed rounds (2010–2018) remain the last available data. The associated ERA Journal List is no longer active, and no live assessment cycle currently exists in Australia.
What is replacing ERA in Australia?
The Australian Research Council is developing a proposed replacement, but as of mid-2026 it has not launched. Sector commentary describes this as an ongoing “least-worst exercise” debate over what a data-driven successor should measure and how tightly it should link to funding.
What comes next for research assessment in both countries?
The UK is committed to a defined REF 2029 timetable with panel recruitment, guidance publication, and a December 2029 results date already fixed by the four funding bodies. Australia’s position is far less settled: the ARC has signalled intent to replace ERA with a more data-driven model, but has not published a firm timetable, structure, or funding link for that successor. Institutions operating across both systems should treat REF 2029 as a scheduled, resourced compliance exercise, and treat any future Australian replacement as a policy development to monitor rather than a framework to plan against today.