David Stern

Name (Individual/Organisation)

David Stern

Responses

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

I don’t think the free text information collected in the ROPE is necessary for DP grants. Simply listing jobs, grants, and publications, and citations would be sufficient.

Also see my responses on Q7.

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.

Current rules make it hard for ECRs on short-term contracts to apply for DP grants. This should be improved.

A major problem is that it is impossible for researchers to communicate with the ARC and learn how to improve their applications. This is in stark contrast to the US NSF for example.

Another option is for brief pre-proposals (say 2 pages) which can reduce the burden on referees/CoE/ and applicants. Many proposals should be culled at this stage rather than going to full applications with budgets, which are sent for review.

If the current submission requirements are maintained, I would increase the number of members of the College of Experts and so reduce their work burden to increase the number of people willing to serve on 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?

I don’t think ERA is necessary as it isn’t used to allocate any funding.

If it is maintained, I think that citation analysis should be used for more disciplines such as economics or political science. This is supported by my own research on this topic:

Bruns S. B. and D. I. Stern (2016) Research assessment using early citation information, Scientometrics 108, 917-935

I would also follow the UK REF model of only submitting a limited number of publications per researcher if peer review is kept in order to put a further focus on quality over quantity.

Submission received

02 December 2022

Publishing statement

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