Group of Eight leads the pack in research

The top researchers and research institutions are revealed in a new edition of The Australian’s Research magazine.

UNSW’s Nicole Kessissoglou was named as Australia’s leading researcher in acoustics and sound. Picture: Hollie Adams

Australia’s top researchers and research institutions are revealed in unprecedented detail in a new edition of The Australian’s Research magazine.

The research leaders’ list, based on big data analysis of up-to-date publicly available information, shows Group of Eight universities are dominant in the more than 250 individual fields of research that are examined.

Monash University tops the list, leading in 39 research fields. The remainder of the top six are the University of Queensland, which leads in 31 fields; UNSW, ahead in 25; the University of Melbourne (21); the University of Sydney (19); and the Australian National University (17). Group of Eight universities lead in 64 per cent of research fields.

A big up-and-comer in research is Griffith University, which is the best outside the top six and leads in 10 research fields.

The Research magazine also identifies the top researcher in each field.

Confirming Griffith’s rising research strength, the university also stands just outside the same top six universities when the number of field-leading researchers residing in individual institutions is tallied.

And last week Nature reported that Griffith University was Australia’s fastest rising institution in its Nature Index.

The Research magazine also identifies Australia’s overall research leaders, and the young up-and-coming research leaders in the eight main disciplines of ­research. Many of the top young researchers (who are less than seven years out from their first publication) are still PhD students, such as Monash University philosopher Stephen Gadsby and the University of Queensland’s James Allen, who is studying wilderness protection.

Some of the overall discipline leaders are recognised world leaders, such at the Australian Catholic University’s educational psychologist Herb Marsh and the University of Sydney’s migration researcher Stephen Castles.

The data crunching to produce this detailed picture of Australian research, using information in Google Scholar, was carried out by talent discovery and research analytics firm League of Scholars, a pioneer in using big data to produce research metrics. The methodologies used are described in the Research magazine.