AustLit

'In 2009 the Australian government, through the Australian Research Council (ARC), changed the way it assesses research quality in Australian universities. The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative introduced new processes for the recognition, collection and evaluation of research, which included—for the first time—assessment of creative works as research. For many in the Creative and Performing Arts areas of Australian tertiary education, this signalled the achievement of a set of goals laid down in 1998 with the Strand Report (Strand 1998). The recognition of creative production as research had been, moreover, a project in various Australian university creative departments for at least a decade prior to Strand, going back as far as the rationales supporting the first research doctorates in the creative arts in the 1980s.' (p. 1)