Flinders University
AC-6: Sustainability Research

Audit of academic publications
The philosophy of Flinders University is to reduce silos and organisational boundaries and as a result only six high level Colleges are recognised as 'departments'. This makes it difficult to allocate academic staff members into disciplines. As alternative to an organisational structure, we analysed our research outputs (publications) based on disciplines identified through the ANZSRC Fields of Research (FoR) codes, combined with SDGs assigned to research outputs. The FoR discipline is used as an alternative for ‘department’. 
•    Disciplines: the Fields of Research codes are part of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/classifications/australian-and-new-zealand-standard-research-classification-anzsrc/latest-release . The Division level (2 digit code) identifies 23 different fields of research (disciplines). Authors can identify the most suitable FoR code(s) when they enter the publication to the system, and after that the library checks all research outputs before they are validated in the system.
•    SDGs: SDGs are allocated to research outputs based on the standard Elsevier SciVal method (using the queries and machine learning component used in the 2023 THE Impact Rankings). Our research management system is Pure, which is an Elsevier product and automatically attributes SDGs to publications retrieved from Scopus. The results are publicly available on the Flinders research portal https://researchnow.flinders.edu.au/en/publications/ 

We identified that in the past three years, Flinders University academics have published at least on research output that is aligned with at least one of the 17 SDGs, for each of the 23 FoR- disciplines.  

Flinders University offers the Reconciliation Scholarship for Indigenous Research to Honours students who commence a research project in one or more of the five critical dimensions identified by Reconciliation Australia: race relations; equality and equity, institutional integrity; unity; and historical acceptance. The intent of the scholarship is to promote reconciliation by furthering understanding and recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories, knowledge and rights through related research projects. The scholarships are funded by the College of Business, Governance and Law. The scholarships are $5,000 each and are awarded based on academic merit and the relevance and quality of the proposed Honours resarch project. 
https://www.flinders.edu.au/scholarships/bgl-reconciliation-scholarship-indigenous-research 
In the past three years this scholarship has been awarded to Indigenous Honours students in the Bachelor of Laws (Honours), Bachelor of Criminology (Honours) and  Bachelor of Laws and Legal Practice (Honours). Subjects of their research were around Australian native title, the right to self-determination for Indigenous peoples, and different components of Australian Criminal Justice system with regards to Aborginal people/Aboriginal Youths.