Anonymous #36

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Anonymous #36

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.

a. the scope of research funding supported by the ARC
a.1 Section 49 Subdivsion B – Capping of funding
Funding has been capped until financial year July 1, 2024 – this should be removed because it leads to underfunding research project panels cutting total funding $ to create feasible success rates. In reality, cost of research has increased and Universities are bearing the increases in these costs by 1. providing a salary gap for fellows because ARC salary rates are lower than EBA and 2. ARC are cutting up to 40% of costs from projects. 3. The ARC are increasing the number of schemes, taking away from existing schemes and further exacerbating underfunding of research.

a.2 Medical Policy.
Advances in engineering and information technology support many disciplines, especially medicine. Yet the current division between medical and non-medical research by our funding organisations in Australia inhibits the development of this core expertise. In the NHMRC, their expertise and publication record is not recognised. While it is understandable that the ARC does not fund medical research, the changes to the medical policy since it was introduced in 2013 has made it extremely difficult for biomedical engineers and digital health experts to be eligible for funding in Australia. Due to the ARC medical policy, they must remove all the benefits of their research because it is medical and thus their research lacks impact and significance. We suggest you have an e) in research eligible for ARC support that included (multidisciplinary) research primarily using engineering or computer science methodology to develop methods, models or equipment that would advance our medical knowledge.

a. Support ECRS with small grants using applications, which are 1 or 2 pages long.

b. the balance of Discovery and Linkage research programs
The ARC must continue to fund fundamental research in the Discovery program as it is the only funder for this type of research. In contrast, industry research is funded by several other sources.

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.

The ARC should become a statutory authority of the Australian Government, similar to the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
Reasons include 1. The ARC will become truly independent of the government, political cycles and remove all political influence by Ministers. 2. The functions of the NHMRC and the ARC can be normalised. 3.The ARC can set firm deadlines for grant announcements. At present they depend on the Minister. Announcements of grants is extremely important for the academic community for research planning and researchers careers. The current uncertainty around announcement dates causes unnecessary stress to academics and their research teams.

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.

Selecting reviewers for grants must be a transparent process.
The methods used to select reviewers needs to be examined carefully to determine whether it finds the expert reviewers who are most aligned to the project.
Using a word cloud generated from the title and 50 word summary of the application along with FOR codes depends too heavily on the written text. This text is written by the applicant for other reasons, not reviewer selection. The title explains the research and possibly an application of the research. The summary includes aims, context and need, methods, outcomes and sometimes benefit. The FOR is based on the technical expertise and methodology. For the keywords in the title and summary to align correctly with the discipline, the summary must only use keywords aligned to their FOR and avoid buzzwords. Buzzwords like AI, Climate change or sustainability, attract researchers from other disciplines outside the application’s topic, and who would naturally have different research priorities. Yet, summaries using a tight range of keywords are rarely written. Since the ARC started using word clouds to select reviews, we have noticed

1. Less alignment of detailed assessors to the subject of grant applications.
2. More reviews with vague or general comments
3. A higher frequency of reviewers misunderstanding the research or making erroneous comments.
Grant applications need to include a section on keywords for reviewer selection.

In addition to changes in methodology to select reviewers, the RMS profile of potential reviewers should be standardised. Potential reviewers can represent themselves too narrowly or too broadly. Both causes problems. Standardisation of RMS profiles to improve comparisons could set both number of FOR codes and digits.

Remove discipline panels and organise panels by impact.

Include feedback from the panel members carriage 1 and carriage 2. This would avoid circumstances when the reviewers comments do not appear to align with the grant outcome.

The ARC should commit to improving the quality of reviews. Suggestions to improve reviews is to make reviewers comments available to other reviewers of the application. This would avoid the ‘cut and paste’ from grants. Rejoinders could be added to this discussion with the option for reviewers to comment again. Finding experts internationally, particularly for the research areas that are still relatively small in Australia, but not overseas.

Provide feedback to large grants before submission A huge amount of work goes into creating a Centre of Excellence or ITRP. These bids would be improved through discussions with college of experts about their topic/application before submission to the scheme. Large grants should be able to obtain feedback.

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

Create a precise calendar of programs and avoid scheme overlap or grant announcements during holidays.

Linkage projects that require industry involvement should have
1. Long lead times 12 weeks or more
2. Not require commitment to the total project if it is greater than 3 years.
3. Be more flexible pre-award on the type of commitment – letter signoff

Submission received

13 December 2022

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