Gabriel Rau

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Gabriel Rau

Responses

Q3. How could the Act be improved to ensure academic and research expertise is obtained and maintained to support the ARC?

How could this be done without the Act becoming overly prescriptive?

Australia must abolish law that allows politicians to veto research grants:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01200-5

Secondly, funding to the ARC must be increased as % of GDP to at least average of OECD:
https://data.oecd.org/rd/gross-domestic-spending-on-r-d.htm

Q6. What elements of ARC processes or practices create administrative burdens and/or duplication of effort for researchers, research offices and research partners?

The application process is a waste of time. Have you calculated the value of the time that highly qualified researchers spend on applications? How does that compare to the funding?

There needs to be a two stage process with short proposal of research idea and CV first, followed by a full application only if successful. This would avoid people wasting their time.

The National Interest Test and illustration of any economic benefits should be abolished. This is inappropriate for blue sky research applications. The best discoveries were done without economic benefits in mind. Do you think Einstein would have succeeded with funding for his Theory of Relativity?

Q8. With respect to ERA and EI:

(a) Do you believe there is a need for a highly rigorous, retrospective excellence and impact assessment exercise, particularly in the absence of a link to funding?

(b) What other evaluation measures or approaches (e.g. data driven approaches) could be deployed to inform research standards and future academic capability that are relevant to all disciplines, without increasing the administrative burden?

(c) Should the ARC Act be amended to reference a research quality, engagement and impact assessment function, however conducted?

(d) If so, should that reference include the function of developing new methods in research assessment and keeping up with best practice and global insights?

Please do not make the application process more difficult than it is. Rather, the process should be simplified. The application burden for academics has only ever increased.

Submission received

10 November 2022

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