Anonymous #08

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Anonymous #08

Responses

Q1. How could the purpose in the ARC Act be revised to reflect the current and future role of the ARC?

For example, should the ARC Act be amended to specify in legislation:
(a) the scope of research funding supported by the ARC
(b) the balance of Discovery and Linkage research programs
(c) the role of the ARC in actively shaping the research landscape in Australia
(d) any other functions?

If so, what scope, functions and role?

If not, please suggest alternative ways to clarify and define these functions.

The ARC has a small funding envelope and one must consider how to get the best return on investment for Australia. It has been shown that researchers are the most creative in the thirties and forties. However, each year most funding gets allocated to level E male professors. For people in the system it is very clear, that ideas often come from less senior researchers, who often also write the successful grant applications. These researchers can only be named as a CI if they secure employment for the following year, and can't be paid by the grant, if they are named as a CI. This really generates a two class system, where people with tenured positions rule.

a) the scope of research funding should be to fund excellent research and excellent researchers for pure basic, strategic basic and applied research. Funding should be project and people focussed, instead of aimed at supporting universities to attract and retain talent. For maximal impact, future workforce retention and succession planning, academics with tenured positions should be excluded from the fellowship schemes, except for the Laureate fellowship. Academics over 65 should be excluded from applying for funding, except as a mentor for others. Teams should have a senior, mid career and early career researchers in the CI team without the need for secured employment. Similarly to the NHMRC fellowships, there should be two gender based ranking lists and an equal number from each list should be funded.
b) the current distribution can remain, the small funding envelope is the major hurdle
c) it seems very ambitious to shape the research landscape with $490 million dollars, but it might be worth considering spotlight funding each year, for example 5 DP projects in material science one year with some extra funding to get them to work together/have a symposium, like a small centre of excellence
d) I think the function of the ARC should be to increase research excellence and capacity by supporting ideas and people

Q2. Do you consider the current ARC governance model is adequate for the ARC to perform its functions?

If not, how could governance of the ARC be improved? For example, should the ARC Act be amended to incorporate a new governance model that establishes a Board on the model outlined in the consultation paper, or another model.

Please expand on your reasoning and/or provide alternative suggestions to enhance the governance, if you consider this to be important.

The ARC should be an independent entity, where universities and states are members and the president is being elected (similarly to the German Research Foundation (DFG)).
The involvement of the states would probably ensure more adequate funding allocations to all states. For example Western Australia and South Australia have seen a continuous retraction of research funding during the last decade with for example only one future fellowship being allocated to a person west of the murray.
The ARC Board is a good model and could include the chief scientists of each state/territory.

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?

Decisions of the independent peer review should be final.

The college of experts and the external reviewers go through a thorough review progress and rank applications. The national interest statement has not been assessed nor should it be assessed, as it is a tool to communicate to the general public the impact of the proposed work. One could think about better ways of communicating with the general public, for example in video form or even question the need.

We are spending $490 million on this, within a total Australian budget of $625.0 billion and I'm not aware of such intense scrutiny of any other federal spending. With the average grant probably less than $625,000 (0.000001), the amount of time invested to write, review, rewrite seems out of proportion.

Q5. Please provide suggestions on how the ARC, researchers and universities can better preserve and strengthen the social licence for public funding of research?

One could consider to have one outreach activity as an compulsory outcome for each grant.

As discussed before, the scrutiny seems disproportional compared to other government spending, which seems to be just accepted by the general public as necessary.

The return on investment for research funding should speak for itself.

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

How come that an ARC DP can be in the top 10% non funded in one year and in the following year with more preliminary data and the addition of a stellar CI be in the bottom 25%?

These results indicates a randomness in the process, which is not understood and researchers will continue to submit similar grants every year until they are successful or write a new grant. This means the "same" grant is reviewed multiple times by different people. Should we be able to attach previous reports and a response to the examiners? This will streamline the review process. Meaningful feedback could be used to improve the grant. This offer might just be available to the grants, which scored in the top 10% the previous year.

The other grants could be submitted as a EOI without information of CI or universities, to give a chance to good ideas.

Q7. What improvements could be made:

(a) to ARC processes to promote excellence, improve agility, and better facilitate globally collaborative research and partnerships while maintaining rigour, excellence and peer review at an international standard?

(b) to the ARC Act to give effect to these process improvements, or do you suggest other means?

Please include examples of success or best practice from other countries or communities if you have direct experience of these.

In Germany you can apply for funding all year around (DFG, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and grants get submitted when sufficient preliminary data have been collected. Every few months, the applications are pooled, reviewed and go in front of a panel. This means that an individual researcher barely ever competes with the same set of researchers (or all others, as in Australia). In addition each researchers has a contact person at the DFG, who will provide feedback on the application. The relationship built is essential and researchers can call their contact to enquire about the process or to get help with changes to the budget etc.

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?

a) yes
b) anything that can be automated and draw existing data
c) not necessary

Q10. Having regard to the Review’s Terms of Reference, the ARC Act itself, the function, structure and operation of the ARC, and the current and potential role of the ARC in fostering excellent Australian research of global significance, do you have any other comments or suggestions?

The ARC needs to be independent of any political interference.

Submission received

28 November 2022

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