Australasian Association of Digital Humanities (AADH)

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Australasian Association of Digital Humanities (AADH)

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.

As a professional association for researchers whose focus is embedded in the humanities and arts, often interdisciplinary, focused on non-traditional research outputs, and on digital infrastructure, our primary concern is that the ARC clearly and openly support these kinds of research, whether that be by specifying them in the Act as within-scope, or by ensuring that processes, wording and administration of grants be appropriate for researchers working in these areas.

Within the Act, the autonomy of the ARC in decision-making, the value of humanities and fundamental research more generally, and the diversity of research activities and research infrastructure supported by the ARC could all be explicitly stated.

Beyond this, other ways to clarify and define the ARC's scope, functions and role in this regard could include consideration of FoR codes, peer review processes, and ensuring that important concepts within ARC policies and documents, such as open research, open access publishing, and FAIR data are framed in such a way that translate clearly to the humanities and the arts.

Q4. Should the ARC Act be amended to consolidate the pre-eminence or importance of peer review?

Please provide any specific suggestions you may have for amendment of the Act, and/or for non-legislative measures.

With regard to the importance of peer review, we mostly wish to comment on non-legislative measures.

This matter is closely connected to the topic of administrative burden, which is a later question in this survey, so we will repeat some content here and there.

An EOI stage to ARC applications would reduce much of the workload around applications, for both researchers and peer reviewers, potentially allowing a wider pool of peer reviewers to give input on applications. For early career and casually employed academics, the faster turnaround possible with an EOI will give them a greater degree of certainty sooner in the year, enabling them to turn their time and energy to other prospects sooner if their grant applications are not competitive.

Secondly, while FoR codes are often seen as a minor, technical part of the grants process, the selection of these codes has a major impact not only on determining the pool of referees, and therefore how appropriate peer review is, but also on ongoing classification of the project administratively and therefore how it ‘counts’. While we appreciate that recently a number of FoR codes relevant to the digital space have been added, there remains no obvious code for Digital Humanities work per se, and, more seriously, no simple way to find the most appropriate codes for complex interdisciplinary work. This renders digital humanities almost invisible in the research landscape, and makes it difficult for researchers to trust that their applications are being reviewed by appropriate peers.

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

Progress has been made in the Australasian research community, including the ARC, in acknowledging the importance of open research, open data, open access publications and open source code. The availability of publicly funded research to the public who funds it is fundamental to general acceptance of this research funding.

We see it as essential that the ARC both continue this progress, to incentivise FAIR data (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), and to consider framing and wording of such principles in ways that resonate with humanities and creative arts scholars. In practical terms this can include consulting with humanities scholars and organisations when the ARC adds requirements or information about open scholarship to its documents, or simply more inclusive word choice such as ‘evidence’ as well as ‘data’.

Building understanding of open scholarship across all research sectors will increase public access to research data and findings, and dispel the myth of the 'ivory tower', which is at least partly responsible for public skepticism of the value of humanities and interdisciplinary research funding.

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

Our two main points here were already addressed in earlier questions but will be repeated here for completeness:

An EOI stage to ARC applications would reduce much of the workload around applications, for both researchers and reviewers. In particular, for early career and casually employed academics, the faster turnaround possible with an EOI will give them a greater degree of certainty sooner in the year, enabling them to turn their time and energy to other prospects sooner if their grant applications are not competitive.

While FoR codes are often seen as a minor, technical part of the grants process, the selection of these codes has a major impact not only on application success (through determining the pool of referees) but also on ongoing classification of the project administratively and therefore how it ‘counts’. While we appreciate that recently a number of FoR codes relevant to the digital space have been added, there remains no obvious code for Digital Humanities work per se, and, more seriously, no simple way to find the most appropriate codes for complex interdisciplinary work. This renders digital humanities almost invisible in the research landscape. It also contributes to administrative burden as it becomes unnecessarily complicated to locate the best FoR codes to classify a project, or to recall/refind these later for university-internal paperwork, submission of publications, etc.

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.

Here we would like to comment on research infrastructure funding. Research infrastructure in the humanities can look very different from the sciences. In the digital humanities there are infrastructure projects of many different scales and scopes, whereas present infrastructure funding adopts a one-size-fits-all approach. The expenses in our infrastructure projects are more often people (hiring coders and paying advisory teams, connecting international partners, consultation within our communities) rather than expensive physical items. As such, digital humanities infrastructure projects frequently fall between the cracks: not high budget or item-centred enough for infrastructure funding, but not sufficiently focussed on basic research for more traditional research grants. Reconsideration of infrastructure funding in consultation with humanities scholars could result in a much more vibrant and exciting range of Australian infrastructure projects for the future.

This is also an area where Australian funding schemes do not closely align with various international schemes, which can make it more difficult to establish global partnerships for infrastructure projects than it is for such partnerships in other kinds of projects.

We also mentioned earlier the value of an EOI stage for grant applications more generally. This too would improve agility and better facilitate global partnerships and collaboration, as it would inform teams about stage 1 unsuccessful outcomes in time to consider applying to other funding bodies in other countries, which generally run on different timelines than the ARC.

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?

I will attach here the full submission from AADH, which touches on matters addressed in answer to earlier questions, as well as further input:

The Australasian Association for Digital Humanities is a professional association for fostering understanding of digital technologies in the humanities, supporting and extending links between digital humanities researchers, and providing international leverage for local projects and initiatives. This is the scope within which we would like to respond to the ARC review consultation. The Association’s context is interdisciplinary, often focused on non-traditional research outputs, and on digital infrastructure. Our membership includes representatives from the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector as well as interdisciplinary researchers and teachings in university contexts and other interested parties.

Our primary concern is that the ARC enshrine an understanding of the value of humanities and creative arts research, and of interdisciplinary research in all parts of the ARC. This ranges from consideration of FoR codes, peer review processes, to a careful consideration of how important concepts such as open research, open access publishing, and FAIR data translate to the humanities and the arts.

In recent years the vetoing of grants by the Minister, and the debate around this, has demonstrated the importance of protecting arms-length peer review, and an acknowledgement that instrumental outcomes and societal progress are dependent on blue sky research and knowledge building. The research community needs assurance that such vetos will only be for extreme cases where the Minister has more information than the ARC and its College of Experts rather than for political purposes.

Progress has been made in the Australasian research community, including the ARC, in acknowledging the importance of open research, open data, open access publications and open source code. We call upon the ARC to continue this progress, to incentivise FAIR data (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), and to consider framing and wording of such principles in ways that resonate with humanities and creative arts scholars. In practical terms this can include consulting with humanities scholars and organisations when the ARC adds requirements or information about open scholarship to its documents, or simply more inclusive word choice such as ‘evidence’ as well as ‘data’.

While FoR codes are often seen as a minor, technical part of the grants process, the selection of these codes has a major impact not only on application success (through determining the pool of referees) but also on ongoing classification of the project administratively and therefore how it ‘counts’. While we appreciate that recently a number of FoR codes relevant to the digital space have been added, there remains no obvious code for Digital Humanities work per se, and, more seriously, no simple way to find the most appropriate codes for complex interdisciplinary work. This renders digital humanities almost invisible in the research landscape.

The consultation paper invites us to consider the administrative burden of grants, and our feedback on this would be that an EOI stage to ARC applications would reduce much of the workload around applications, for both researchers and reviewers. In particular, for early career and casually employed academics, the faster turnaround possible with an EOI will give them a greater degree of certainty sooner in the year, enabling them to turn their time and energy to other prospects sooner if their grant applications are not competitive.

Finally, we would like to comment on research infrastructure funding. Research infrastructure in the humanities can look very different from the sciences. In the digital humanities there are infrastructure projects of many different scales and scopes, whereas present infrastructure funding adopts a one-size-fits-all approach. The expenses in our infrastructure projects are more often people (hiring coders and paying advisory teams, connecting international partners, consultation within our communities) rather than expensive physical items. As such, digital humanities infrastructure projects frequently fall between the cracks: not high budget or item-centred enough for infrastructure funding, but not sufficiently focussed on basic research for more traditional research grants. Reconsideration of infrastructure funding in consultation with humanities scholars could result in a much more vibrant and exciting range of Australian infrastructure projects for the future.

In summary, we would like the ARC review to carefully consider the impact of its current and future processes on interdisciplinary humanities research. The above suggestions range from minor changes in framing or wording and the provision of more usable interfaces through to changes in application processes and scope of grant schemes.

Thank you for the opportunity to make this submission. We would be happy to consult on any of these or other relevant issues further.

Submission received

14 December 2022

Publishing statement

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