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Publication Rates

The basic unit of analysis used in the table that follows is DEST publication points. The Department of Education, Science and Training collects data on research publications from each Australian university. The data is audited every few years. The department allocates 5 points for a book published commercially and 1 point for each of a chapter in a book published commercially, an article in a refereed scholarly journal and a refereed conference paper. The number of publication points is divided by the number of staff in the organisational unit to generate a publication rate, which is a measure of research productivity but not necessarily of research quality.

In 2000 continuing academic staff in Australian universities reported an average of 0.8 DEST public points each. An average of 44 per cent of staff reported no publication point in 2000. Interesting, the universities of Adelaide, Western Australia, Sydney and Macquarie each reported high average research productivity but also a high proportion of staff who reported no publication point in 2000. Conversely, the universities of NSW, UTS, Swinburne and Curtin reported a lower than average proportion of staff who reported no publication point in 2000, but also had a lower than average publication rate overall.

The table includes all publications reported by institutions, including publications by casual staff and research students. However, productivity was calculated as a proportion of continuing staff. This is likely to overstate the productivity of continuing staff and understate the proportion of continuing staff reporting no publication in 2000.

Publication productivity per continuing academic staff by institution, 2000
University Weighted publication points Staff Staff who published Staff who didn't publish % who didn't publish Pubs/ staff
ANU (incl IAS) 1,851.94 1,111 1,710* 1.67
University of Newcastle 733 788 481 307 309 0.93
University of Adelaide 1,136.35 965 472 493 51 1.18
U Western Australia 1,311.53 1,154 552 602 52 1.14
University of Queensland 2,234.70 2,023 1,905 118 6 1.10
Murdoch University 473.48 467 319 148 32 1.01
University of Melbourne 2,330.83 2,398 1,373 1,025 43 0.97
University of Sydney 2,206.62 2,280 1,186 1,094 48 0.97
Macquarie University 640.67 675 347 328 49 0.95
QUT 837.88 912 515 397 44 0.92
Flinders University 603.02 674 536 138 20 0.89
University of Tasmania 599.37 673 440 233 35 0.89
University of Wollongong 540.53 616 NA 0.88
Edith Cowan University 508.41 598 297 301 50 0.85
Monash University 1,882.53 2,436 1,448 988 41 0.77
Griffith University 673.96 883 419 464 53 0.76
UNSW (incl ADFA) 2,045.97 2,682 1,926 756 28 0.76
Deakin University 581.27 785 314 471 60 0.74
UTS 516.08 711 474 237 33 0.73
James Cook 336.71 510 204 306 60 0.66
Uni South Australia 536.93 846 346 500 59 0.63
VUT 364.10 574 250 324 56 0.63
Swinburne 248.93 402 262 140 35 0.62
La Trobe 707.63 1,146 501 645 56 0.62
Sunshine Coast 52.04 86 35 51 59 0.61
Curtin 630.01 1,046 672 374 36 0.60
University of Canberra 197.59 329 185 144 44 0.60
Central Queensland 193.89 350 155 195 56 0.55
Southern Cross 147.32 266 116 150 56 0.55
RMIT 472.69 1,040 524 516 50 0.45
UNE 209.53 471 212 259 55 0.44
Western Sydney 439.19 1,001 410 591 59 0.44
University of Ballarat 68.70 168 73 95 57 0.41
Southern Queensland 144.47 381 112 269 71 0.38
Charles Sturt 216.98 589 170 419 71 0.37
Charles Darwin 69.51 240 47 193 80 0.29
Notre Dame Australia 11.16 47 4 43 91 0.24
Australian Catholic U 76.83 394 39 355 90 0.20
All 24,440.35 30,690 17,321 13,369 44 0.80

Source: Nelson (2002) Higher education at the crossroads, table D5: 80.

* ANU included students in its count of people who published.