Higher Education Research Data Collection


Higher Education Research Data Collection is the annual collection of statistics from Australian universities about research output and income. It is currently collected by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.
It was originally called the Higher Education Financial and Research Publications Data Collection.
Higher Education Funding Act 1988 section 18 outlined the data that must be reported by institutions.

Purpose

The statistics are used by the government to allocate funding under the following schemes:
The collection only accepts publications of the following types:
Each institution submits four numbers as part of HERDC; one for each of the above types of accepted publication. These numbers are the aggregate of the contribution of the university to each accepted publication. For example, if a book has two authors from different institutions, each institution has a 0.5 contribution to the publication. The score for books, journal articles and conference publications is a simple division by the number of authors. For book chapters, each authors first chapter in a book is scored using the same method as other publication types, however additional chapters by an author are given a decreasing value.
Each institution is required to keep evidence of all of the publications it has included in their submission, and the evidence may be audited.
The government has maintained a "Register of Refereed Journals", however this has been discontinued, and a "Register of Acceptable Commercial Publishers".

Income

Income is collected where it fits within the definitions provided for four groups:
  1. Australian Competitive Grants
  2. Other Public Sector Research Income
  3. Industry and Other Research Income
  4. Cooperative Research Centre Research Income