Emeritus ProfessorRobert Cummins

Research resource generation

In 2000, Professor Cummins founded the Australian Centre on Quality of Life as a virtual centre within Deakin university. The centre is designed as a resource for students and researchers. The Centre has about 700 members and has received over 2,200 citations (using Google exact word citation count for ‘Australian Centre on Quality of Life’). The Centre is accessed at no cost to the user and hosts the International Wellbeing Group, formed jointly with Dr Anna Lau, with Professor Cummins as convenor. The IWBG comprises around 350 researchers from over 50 countries and has the primary purpose of developing the Personal Wellbeing Index as a valid international measure of subjective wellbeing.

Research grants

Professor Cummins has collaborated with many different colleagues to fund research into quality of life through the acquisition of research grants. He has had modest success, with one outstanding exception. In 2001 he and academic colleague Richard Eckersley, collaborated with Australian Unity, a health insurance company in Melbourne, to establish a national survey on Wellbeing. As a result, Deakin University formed a partnership with Australian Unity, which company has thereafter and continuously, funded the direct costs of conducting and analysing regular surveys of the Australian adult population, managed by Professor Cummins until his retirement. These surveys became known as the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index, and the primary instrument used to measure subjective wellbeing is the Personal Wellbeing Index developed by Professor Cummins. By 2025 these surveys had monitored the subjective wellbeing of over 80,000 Australian adults (18+) over the previous 24 years, and are ongoing. In all, 42 national surveys have been conducted, and each data set, together with a matching written report, is publicly available through the Australian Centre on Quality of Life. The cost born by Australian Unity to fund this project is confidential.

Publications and citations

Professor Cummins’ list of cited publications can be found by entering ‘R. A. Cummins’ into Google Scholar. He has published over 400 books, monographs, chapters, papers, tests and reports. Over 300 of his publications have been cited at least 3 times. His h-index is 84 and in the single year 2025 his publications received over 2,500 new citations. His lifetime total citations exceed 37,000.

In 2024 and 2025, Professor Cummins’ publications were recognised by ScholarGPS.

Dear Dr. Cummins,

ScholarGPS celebrates Highly Ranked Scholars™ for their exceptional performance in various Fields, Disciplines, and Specialties. Your prolific publication record, the high impact of your work, and the outstanding quality of your scholarly contributions have placed you in the top 0.05% of all scholars worldwide.

Listed below is a summary of the areas (and your ranking in those areas) in which you have been awarded Highly Ranked Scholar status based on your accomplishments over the totality of your career (lifetime) and over the prior five years:

Highly Ranked Scholar worldwide - Lifetime ranking

In 2024: #4 Subjective well-being

In 2025: #5 Subjective well-being

In 2024: #15 Well-being

In 2025: # 12 Well-being

Highly Ranked Scholars™ are the most productive (number of publications) authors whose works are of profound impact (citations) and of utmost quality (h-index). Enabled by the generation of over 30 million detailed scholar profiles based on unique ScholarGPS™ classification of over 200 million scholarly publications of record into one of over 350,000 distinct Specialties, 177 Disciplines, and 14 Fields, Highly Ranked Scholars™ are, for the first time, identified within each Specialty, Discipline, Field, and all Fields. Highly Ranked Scholars™ are those with ScholarGPS™ Ranks of 0.05% or better. The data used to identify the ScholarGPS™ Highly Ranked Scholars™ are based on lifetime or prior five-year activity, weighting each publication and citation by the number of authors, and excluding self-citations.

Current Research Activities

• Editor of the Journal of Happiness Studies and a Board Member on 12 other journals.
• Research advisor for the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index (Title citations using Google exact word citation count = 2,600).
• Author, Bulletin of the Australian Centre on quality of life (Title citations using Google exact word citation count = 2,300). This weekly scientific publication, sent to all 700 members of the Centre, is now in its 9th year of continuous operation.
• Editor, Personal Wellbeing Index (Title citations using Google exact word citation count = 8,200)
• Editor with Tanja Capic of the new website for the Australian Centre on Quality of Life, as it moves from an external site to be formally included within Deakin University. This move is expected to be completed by mid-2025.
• A new source of information on the “Psychological Science of Quality of Life” is under development, with the assistance of Hannah Lane and Tanja Capic. This single document will combine all past issues of the Australian Centre on Quality of Life Bulletin. It will comprise some one million words and 5,000 references.