Ned Rossiter

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Ned Rossiter

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.

1. Reintroduce the ARC Small Grants scheme. This scheme should be targeted toward early and mid-career researchers, who have become increasingly marginalised and unsuccessful in applications in Discovery Project and Linkage Project schemes. Senior researchers at Level E and D should be excluded from submitting applications to a revitalised Small Grants scheme.

2. Reintroduce other ARC legacy schemes that had substantial impact, especially for ECRs and MCRs. Here, we are thinking of the ARC Cultural Network Scheme in particular – “one of only of only three Networks from the humanities and social sciences. By the end of the funding period, the CRN had partnerships with 11 Australian universities, and had 73 participants from 21 institutions.” The impact of this scheme continues to resonate today, with many of the participants in that network going on to develop careers as leading researchers and educators in their fields.

We also strongly support the resumption of the ARC Research Fellowships scheme, which enabled more expansive career development possibilities for postdoctoral researchers following the completion of their PhD.

3. Institute a two stage submission process into all schemes, starting with an initial short summary with project description, research team and budget. Following a rapid review, select projects would be invited for full submission in a second round. Such a process will ensure a much better use of resources, higher success rates, faster turnaround and reduce what are currently high levels of disaffection in the academic community with ARC schemes on the whole.

4. Redistribution of funding across schemes. Current ARC Linkage Project success rates sit at around 30% while ARC Discovery Project success rates have dropped to a low of 18%. We recommend funds from the ARC LP scheme be redirected back into the DP scheme to ensure equity of success across the two primary schemes targeted by researchers in Australia.

5. We note that funding levels are not addressed by the current Review. However, we find it necessary to highlight some basic disparities in levels of funding for research and development in Australia compared to other countries.

We recommend the ARC undertake routine lobbying for funding that benchmarks gross domestic spending on research and development against similarly ‘middle-power’ OECD countries. In 2000, Australia’s gross domestic spending on R&D was 1.475% of GDP, ranking below countries such as Austria (1.886%), Belgium (1.936%), Canada (1.858%), Finland (3.241%), France (2.093%), Germany (2.410%), Israel (3.930%), South Korea (2.125%), Singapore (1.817%), Switzerland (2.259%) and Taiwan (1.913%).

The latest OECD select country data for 2019 show Australia spending 1.797% of GDP on R&D, while Austria spends 3.130%, Belgium 3.159%, Canada 1.746%, Finland 2.800%, France 2.192%, Germany 3.186%, Israel 5.140%, South Korea 4.627%, Singapore 1.891%, Switzerland 3.147% and Taiwan 3.493%.

Overall, Australia’s investment in research and development is substantially lower than most countries tabled in this brief comparison. Many competitor countries in the region have dramatically increased levels of investment in R&D. Unless Australia increases investment, it is set to fall further behind the majority of OECD countries and faces the likely prospect of declining competitiveness in the commercialisation activities that follow on from investment in R&D. Source: OECD 2022.

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?

Address issues of sustainability of the detailed assessor’s pool, including participation in the ARC’s College of Experts (the latter of which has long-standing cultural issues related to gender and racial diversity across all panels, STEM more than HASS).

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

1. Remove the ministerial right to veto from legislation and uphold international administrative norms of research councils that ensure full independence from government in decision making.

Such a practice is consistent with the British Haldane principle, and will bring the ARC into alignment with peak research funding bodies, including the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council (UK), the British Academy, the National Research Council of Canada, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research, the Icelandic Centre for Research, the Singapore Agency for Science, Technology and Research, the German Research Foundation and the National Research Foundation of South Africa.

2. Remove the National Interest Test. This administrative addition made to ARC schemes has resulted in further delay in funding outcomes, duplication of the ‘Benefit’ section in all applications, and is a wasteful use of already stretched resources in universities and the ARC. Moreover, it encourages a widespread practice of researchers and university research offices attempting to second guess the ideological predilection of the minister responsible for approving projects already recommended for funding by the ARC.

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

See previous comment on NIT.

Submission received

12 December 2022

Publishing statement

Yes, I would like my submission to be published and my name and/or the name of the organisation to be published alongside the submission. Your submission will need to meet government accessibility requirements.