Matt Wand

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Matt Wand

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 Australian Research Council should revert to ensuring that Australia has a level of funding for basic research (e.g. statistical methodology and theory) that is commensurate with similar countries such as Canada.

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.

This submitter does not know enough about this topic (7 hours from the deadline) to say anything useful.

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?

This submitter does not know enough about this topic (7 hours from the deadline) to say anything useful.

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.

This submitter does not know enough about this topic (7 hours from the deadline) to say anything useful.

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

Possibly the National Interest Test process.

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 person making this submission works in the field of Statistics, which is within the Mathematical Sciences division according to the Australian Research Council's field of research designations. Over the last 5 Discovery Project rounds the proportion of grants going to Statistics as a proportion of mathematical sciences in general is only 15.9% - and about half of these are not "Statistics" as defined in terms of publications in the field's main journals. Therefore, between about 1 in 12 and 1 in 6 Mathematical Sciences grants in the last 5 years are in Statistics. During 2022 I organised a discussion group among around 10 prominent Australian statisticians including 5 who are fellows of the Australian Academy of Science. The consensus is that this proportion is very low compared to other areas of mathematics such as pure mathematics. We are concerned that there are cultures within other branches of mathematics where mediocre grant proposals are scored highly. We suggest that the Australian Research Council see if there is numerical evidence of this concern, and if there should be normalisations conducted within each 4901, 4902, 4903, 4904, 4905, 4999 field of research code to allow for the fact that some branches tend to score more highly than others.

Submission received

14 December 2022

Publishing statement

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