Anonymous #52

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Anonymous #52

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.

Funding that was removed from the DP scheme this last round and put into the LP scheme should immediately be restored to the DP scheme, and the balance of the two schemes prescribed in the act.
We have evidence that the balance of the two schemes up to 2021 was more or less correct - e.g. I have been on the CoE in this period and the number of outstanding LP proposals matched the available proportion of funding quite well - although the number of outstanding DP / fellowship applications always far outnumbered the available funding. Now there is a risk of non-outstanding LP applications being funded but more and more outstanding DP applications of great value to Australia not being funded.

It is assumed by some people that this is about applied vs pure research. It is not about that. Most DP research is also applied. The difference between the schemes is that LP schemes are partly funded by industry, often private companies- this is a way of outsourcing research funding to the private sector so government is paying less of it. It is analagous to the medicare levy increase for people who don't pay private health insurance, or substantial government funding of private schools exceeding government funding of government schools. This now seems to be happening at the expense of research quality.

The overall ARC funding amount for Australian research has declined severely over the last few years (e.g. more than 10% drop in DP funding this round alone), it is crucial that this decline is halted.

The ARC should focus on funding research and put as much of their budget into this core function as possible.

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

Manipulating 'social licence' for research is not the ARC's role. The ARC needs to focus on doing it's main job well- funding high quality research fairly, and as much of it as possible. Do not get distracted and dilute this work.

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

The repeated re-writes of the National Interest Test separate to the CoE assessment process has been an awful waste of effort (i.e. money) for researchers and research offices and source of unnecessary stress. It is good news that this will now be part of the main application, similar to the former public summary in part A. The wording of this summary should not be part of the actual assessment.

Scrap the Research Environment section. Everything useful that applicants can say about the resources to do the project where they work is in the methods of part D anyway. The Research Environment section adds nothing useful and is ignored by most assessors. The current Research Environment section is a mixture of duplication from project part D and ROPE part F, with some unfair bonus points for being at a Go8 thrown in. If anything, excellent researchers should get bonus points for high achievement at institutions that aren't part of the Go8, not the other way around. Good assessors know this and account for it themselves- even more reason to get rid of the unnecessary and unfair 'Research Environment section'. Those assessors who don't ignore it should be ignoring it.

Scrap the Communication of Results section. This section adds nothing to the evidence that the detailed assessors or general assessors can use to make decisions. It is uninformative speculation (everyone just says 'I'll publish research in Nature and Science, and publish in The Conversation for public communication').

The section names and format of the project part D should be very clear and self-evident ('project context' 'project description' 'aims' 'methods' etc). There should be no advantage to senior researchers who have experience in deciphering the convoluted names of sections that the ARC currently uses, and what topics should be covered in each one in order not to duplicate excessively. There should be no need for research offices to give workshops on what the the ARC really means by the terms in the section headings (or their best guess at what the ARC means).

Mandatory use of ORCID to import publications for the ROPE section of ARC grants in stages (including labelling 1 to 10 for the ten best designation) is a failure, a cause of administrative and researcher burden and stress. It makes more work for applicants, not less, and it introduces errors. Some of the errors are imposssible to fix, such as inability to show non-English characters and some other symbols, not showing all authors (so assessors can't see which author the applicant is). The publication list does not appear in the two-stage online version as it will in the pdf- not in date order, making it impossible to edit intuitively and especially difficult to selectively remove some papers if the list is over the 100 paper threshold (the 'show pdf' button does not help). International PIs cannot deal with this laborious method of importing publication lists from ORCID, and Australian CIs have to do this for them. As an assessor I have seen several applications by junior or overseas applicants with no publication list because they did not save the refreshed ORCID import correctly and you can't see it on the page- this is wasteful and mean.

Get rid of the 'INVESTIGATOR(S)/CAPABILITY' heading in the middle of the project description part D- have all of the ROPE in the ROPE section part F. This half page of ROPE inside the project section D is pointless duplication.

In general, make all ARC instructions clear and transparent. Don't waste effort on punishing applicants over petty font size reduced in tables rules, margin rules, preprints rules etc
No ministerial vetoes

Set dates for release of funded projects reduce stress and wasteful loss of staff who depend on soft money

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.

The stranglehold of level E men from Go8 institutions in ARC grants is stifling innovation and wasting Australia's research talent and future. The same restricted groups of researchers with a subset of valuable research questions always lead / get most of the funding. ECRs and women need pro-active initiatives to overcome this serious problem. Ways that could address this are:

Tiers in DP, LP, and DECRA schemes similar to the tiers in future fellowships. The future fellowship scheme does not have the same problems with low representation of women leaders and level E men getting most of the funding, because future fellowships have junior, mid and senior tiers and quotas for each tier to allow junior researchers to get some grants. Other schemes should do this.

The ARC should re-introduce something similar to the small grant scheme, which existed ~20 years ago. When the small grant scheme was scrapped it was said that universities would fund the same thing with internal funds. Of course they didn't. A one-year ARC project funding scheme allows recent PhD graduates to get a 12 month postdoc on a specific project, giving them a foothold and papers. This was the major benefit of the small grnts scheme. The DECRA is just not working for new graduates- it is unrealistic to expect recent PhD students to get a sole investigator fellowship (a DECRA) but now that it their only choice. Australia really has no options for recent PhD graduates to get into science research any more.

The ARC fellowships could learn from the NHMRC and give continuity through all career levels. Not just ECRs are at a disadvantage, also level Ds have fewer ARC grants than any other seniority level, especially level D women.

The feedback for unsuccessful grants should be mnore transparent. Currently researchers have to make a freedom of information submission to get feedback- they should just always get this feedback. General assessors should be able to provide some standardised general points of advice (they have points written down for the SAC meeting, but aren't allowed to provide individual feedback).

General assessors always have a detailed and carefully thought-out discussion of how to improve ARC processes at the end of the SAC meeting. The ARC should listen carefully to this feedback from general assessors and consider implementing much of it.

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?

Do you believe there is a need for a highly rigorous, retrospective excellence and impact assessment exercise- no, absolutely not. ARC management needs to think critically about who this is meant to be for. The main use of the ERA has been for universities to cite when trying to get resources and for researchers to cite in the 'research environment' section of ARC applications- i.e. this is in an ARC / Go8 bubble and not valuable in any way (it's not 'to inform research standards'! How could it do that?)- it's an incredible waste of time and money just for people to say something about themselves that they would have anyway. Prospective students and international collaborators do not need or pay attention to the ERA ar any similar exercise, they use their own judgement about particular course through word of mouth and value for money and they vote with their feet.

'impact assessment' and 'engagement' are not the ARC's role. The ARC needs to focus on doing it's main job well- funding high quality research fairly, and as much of it as possible. Do not get distracted and dilute this work of pursuing excellence in funding research. Nuanced, case-by-case explanations of impact are the best way to link 'impact' to individual research. This is already in the assessment process.

Should that reference include the function of developing new methods in research assessment and keeping up with best practice and global insights- absolutely not.

Q9. With respect to the ARC’s capability to evaluate research excellence and impact:

(a) How can the ARC best use its expertise and capability in evaluating the outcomes and benefits of research to demonstrate the ongoing value and excellence of Australian research in different disciplines and/or in response to perceived problems?

(b) What elements would be important so that such a capability could inform potential collaborators and end-users, share best practice, and identify national gaps and opportunities?

(c) Would a data-driven methodology assist in fulfilling this purpose?

'impact assessment' and 'outcome assessment' are not the ARC's role. The ARC needs to focus on doing it's main job well- funding high quality research fairly, and as much of it as possible. Do not get distracted and dilute this work of pursuing excellence in funding research. Use the ARC's budget to fund research. Use the College of Experts with appointed detailed assessors to assess impact, outcomes and benefits.

Submission received

14 December 2022

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