Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC)

Responses

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 Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) thanks the independent ARC Review Panel for the opportunity to comment on the Review of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Act 2001 (ARC Review).

The ARDC drives the development of national digital research infrastructure that provides Australian researchers with a competitive advantage through data. The ARDC is Australia’s peak body for research data. We aim to accelerate research and innovation by driving excellence in the creation, analysis and retention of high-quality data assets. We facilitate access to national digital research infrastructure, platforms, skills, data sets and tools from academia, industry and government for all Australian researchers. The ARDC is funded through the Australian Government’s
National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to support national digital research infrastructure for Australian researchers.

ARDC advice on calls for better harnessing data and technology

The ARDC notes many documents recommend improved use of data and technology for the administration and evaluation of Australian research and its impact. Most recently:
l Recommendation 11 of the 2020-21 ERA EI Review proposed harnessing data and technology to reduce reporting burdens, particularly through better use of existing data and identifiers [footnote 1]
l The current Minister’s Statement of Expectations for the Australian Research Council (ARC) notes the need ‘to establish a modern data driven approach’ for the ERA but also states this should extend to measuring quality research and research impact across Australia’s universities.
l Lastly, the Consultation Paper for this Review notes the opportunities of improved data for the ERA and EI (should it continue) (Q8) but also asks for proposals about how to extend this evaluation capability further ‘beyond the research sector’ (Q9).

Responding to stakeholder needs through more open and dynamic data
Institutional reporting on research (including submissions to the ERA/EI) constitute data about the research system. This information is invaluable for understanding national research and innovation.

The principles of Open Government and Open Science (to which Australia is an adherent [footnote 2]) require that access to such data would be as open as possible and as closed as necessary. Therefore, researchers, institutions and the funders should publish publicly at least the metadata of every research activity as soon as possible to enable continuous evaluation [footnote 3]. This data should be of a quality and sophistication appropriate for use in smart research systems research. This would include informatics standards such as standardised terminologies, persistent identifiers, and common data and metadata models.

Organisations like the ARDC can reuse this information to create research ‘knowledge graphs’ that connect researchers with their activities, outputs and impacts. With the right data this could, for example, be used to trace research funding nationally from jurisdictional budgets through funders and programs, projects and researchers, down to individual Fields of Research (FoR) and impact measures.

Important pieces of the necessary data infrastructure for this are already in place and used by institutions and researchers. For example, many researchers have an ORCID and use a DOI when publishing research outputs. The Government should look to strengthen and extend this collective infrastructure further rather than duplicating infrastructure in the ARC solely for evaluation purposes.

Efforts to realise the benefits of such a system are also already underway, such as for the ARDC’s Linked Research Australia project that will facilitate improved engagement between researchers and industry [footnote 4]. The potential is that these types of services could be reused by the ARC and many other stakeholders for a range of purposes (and regardless of whether ERA/EI processes are continued).

For this system of national data to work most effectively a number of different parts of the system need to be mutually reinforcing. In this regard, a revised ARC Act could lead efforts nationally or, at the very least, ensure the ARC closely supports the efforts of another lead Act or agency.

Recommendation: The renewed ARC Act should ensure reporting requirements leverage national data infrastructure and make sophisticated data available to stakeholders for a broad range of purposes.
 
Mandate use of global unique persistent identifiers

Creation of comprehensive national research knowledge graphs rely on broad adoption of global persistent identifiers for research objects and activities across portfolios and jurisdictions.

Ideally, use of these identifiers would be mandated for select components regardless of the funding agency. This would ensure traversable links between funders, [footnote 5] grants, [footnote 6] institutions, [footnote 7] research projects, [footnote 8] research outputs [footnote 9] (including research data [footnote 10]) and citation analysis. As stated in the ERA Review, this ‘would allow the ARC to gather data more effectively and pre-populate ERA submissions without university involvement’. [footnote 11] A range of other purposes beyond the ERA (and the ARC) would also benefit if this capability continued to be matured and adopted across the research system nationally.

This type of system would also demonstrably reduce the burden on researchers thereby improving the productivity of the research system. A recently published report by the MoreBrains Cooperative, commissioned by the ARDC and the Australian Access Federation (AAF) backs this up. It found that close to 38,000 person-days per year, equivalent to nearly AUS$24 million, could be saved through the nationwide adoption of key identifiers and the reuse of their associated metadata. [footnote 12]

While use of identifiers has been encouraged for many years in various policies, adoption is still lower than required, particularly outside of the ARC and the National Health and Medical Research Council. The challenge therefore is to understand how a renewed ARC Act might facilitate improved adoption of identifiers, particularly across the research grants in other portfolios and jurisdictions.

Recommendation: The renewed ARC Act should allow the making of rules or guidelines that mandate broad use of global unique persistent identifiers for publicly funded research nationally.

Definition of research outputs

Research data and research software across all FoR Codes are regarded internationally as legitimate and highly valued research outputs. [footnote 13] In Australia, acceptance is less clear, but typically current definitions of research outputs prevent data and software being accepted for use in the evaluation of all FoR.






Of note, in January 2020 the Group of Eight signed the Sorbonne Declaration on Research Data Rights that commits them to ‘ensuring peer-reviewed publications are supported by the necessary FAIR data sets as research findings (that) must be accessible, verifiable and replicable’. This commitment, amongst others in the declaration, was considered ‘an essential issue for the quality and transparency of research’ as well as necessary ‘to accelerate scientific discoveries and economic development’.

In January 2021, the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development updated its 2006 Recommendation concerning Access to Research Data from Public Funding to include the need to ‘foster the creation of an environment favourable to new types of actions that facilitate the dissemination of research outputs beyond publications and their recognition within the research assessment process’. Australia is an adherent to this Recommendation.

In the UK, the Research Evaluation Framework 2021 (REF) [footnote 14] accepted a range of outputs across all FoR including software, website content, digital or visual media, and research data sets and databases.

The ARDC supports expansion of the types of research outputs accepted for evaluation across all FoR to include digital artefacts in a manner comparable with the UK REF and our international commitments.

Recommendation: The renewed ARC Act should allow a broad definition of research outputs for use in grant and research evaluation for all FoR and in line with international trends and best practice.

National research grant funding rules

A key challenge to gaining a more complete picture of the national research system is that there is no single set of funding rules applicable across all publicly funded research grants. In effect, every funding organisation writes their own rules on the needs specific to research related grants, such as whether a researcher must supply an ORCID. This creates enormous variability across the system as a whole.

Contrast this, at the Commonwealth level at least, with the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines (CGRG) 2017 created under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA). The CGRG aims to ensure consistent administration of grants across all government organisations, but this (appropriately) does not extend to dictating the requirements particular just to research grants.

There are, for example, Grant Connected Policies - whole of government policies with which all grants must comply. This approach, rather than inclusion in the renewed ARC Act, may be another option to achieve some of the system wide recommendations outlined above.

Recommendation: Drafting of the ARC Act should consider use of a range of instruments necessary to achieve greater consistency in administrative practices across publicly funded research grants nationally.

Footnote References
[1] Including ‘strongly encouraging’ use of persistent digital identifiers such as Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) and Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

[2] For example, the and the Open Government Partnership (https://www.opengovpartnership.org/) and the
UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science (https://en.unesco.org/science-sustainable-future/open-science/recommendation)

[3] Such as to Research Data Australia (https://researchdata.edu.au/)

[4] New Capability for Linking Industry and Research ARDC (https://ardc.edu.au/article/new-capability-for-linking-industry-and-research/)

[5] Crossref Funder Registry (https://www.crossref.org/services/funder-registry/)

[6] Global Persistent Identifiers for grants, awards, and facilities - Crossref (https://www.crossref.org/blog/global-persistent-identifiers-for-grants-awards-and-facilities/)

[7] Research Organization Registry (https://ror.org/)

[8] Research Activity Identifier (https://www.raid.org.au/)

[9] DOI (https://www.doi.org/)

[10] DataCite (https://datacite.org/)

[11] ERA EI Review Final Report 2020-2021, p. 20. (https://www.arc.gov.au/sites/default/files/era_ei_ac_report.pdf)

[12] How five PIDs and metadata could save your country millions!

[13] For example, Australian Government Productivity Commission ‘Data Availabiltiy and Use’ (2017) pp. 115-118. (https://ardc.edu.au/event/how-five-pids-and-metadata-could-save-your-country-millions/)

[14] Guidance on revisions to REF 2021 (https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications-and-reports/guidance-on-revisions-to-ref-2021/)

Submission received

14 December 2022

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