Adrian Collins

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Adrian Collins

Responses

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.

Reform ARC grant processes to support international research, while improving agility and creating reciprocal funding arrangements without compromising the quality and independence of ARC's peer review processes.

Dr Adrian Collins, Associate Director, Research Collaboration
Maria Roitman, Senior Advisor, International Research Strategy

(The views expressed are their professional opinions and not representative of the University of Melbourne).

Background

In accordance with current guidelines, international researchers cannot readily access research funding from the ARC as co-investigators, even though their contributions are critical to the quality and impact of research led by Australian-based researchers. As competition for ideas and talent intensifies, the disruption of the pandemic on researcher mobility combined with concerns over security, trade practices and human rights have started to shift patterns of global research and collaboration. Now, more than ever, Australian-based researchers need greater flexibility in how they can apply their hard-won grant funding to secure cooperation with the best international collaborators in scientifically advanced and strategically important countries. These top-level collaborations are critical to Australia’s continued efforts to strengthen our research capability, aid in research translation, and increases the impact of our research globally.

The first step in providing greater international research opportunities for Australian-based researchers doesn’t necessarily require an injection of more funding by our research councils or the Government agencies, it can occur with a relatively simple revision of ARC funding rules. This first step is needed to allow recipients of ARC grants to allocate a portion of their funding to international co-investigators where it is needed to lift the quality and impact of their research. These costs would need to be clearly defined and costed, and might include field and consumable costs, use of research platforms, and salaries (if justified). They would not include institutional overhead or other indirect costs. This would help bring Australia in line with best practice by funders in our key partner countries and leverage funding opportunities in others.

Together, the 2022-23 ARC and NHMRC budgets totalled nearly $2B ($0.9B and $1B respectively). In the global scale though, $2B represents a small pot of funding that is subject to ever increasing demand, as demonstrated by ever falling success rates. By comparison, the USA’s major public funding agencies - the NIH and the NSF - will spend the combined equivalent of ~$AU 75B in 2023. Interestingly, the NIH already allows international researchers, including Australians, to access a small portion of their funding pool. This serves to attract the best researchers to work with theirs, to develop treatments and technologies that ultimately benefit its citizens. Unfortunately, our researchers can’t return the favour. Under current rules, the ARC only allows international airfares for collaborators to visit Australia, or Australian researchers to visit their partners, which is a limited incentive for many top-level researchers who are time poor and not attracted to carbon-generating long-haul flights.
The “opening up” of ARC funding is not just an issue of principle, it is a change that will ensure Australia continues to attract the best collaborators who might otherwise work with other partners. In doing so, a more globally engaged ARC could take the lead for establishment of reciprocal funding arrangements with countries where Australian researchers can’t currently access funding. On a global scale, this approach would enable Australia, and its partners, to form a global research funding network that allows researchers to work more freely, and collectively, to address the world’s shared challenges.
While Australian funding councils may argue they have co-funding arrangements already in place with several counterparts and consortia internationally, these efforts only support a handful of joint projects, have a high transactional cost, and require either codification of existing research budgets or commitment of new funds. By contrast, the opening of ARC funding to support international co-investigators would have a low transactional cost as the administration and review processes at both Councils would remain unchanged.

The benefits of the proposed change have already been observed by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), who recently adopted the policy of funding international co-investigators after trialling the change:

“Experience demonstrates that the policy not only offers a great opportunity to recognise international researchers’ contributions to UK projects, but also provides a more transparent understanding of the nature of such collaboration. It is designed to be a simple and straightforward policy that can be implemented through existing schemes with no differences in peer review or post award administration.” – UK AHRC

The opening up of ARC funds would clearly add much needed capacity for Australian researchers to attract the best collaborators to the research projects they lead. Importantly though, the real benefit from this action would come when used to establish reciprocal arrangements with other, typically much larger, global funders. Without the need to buy into traditional “pay to play” models of collaboration, the proposed revision would effectively create a much larger pool of international funding that Australian researchers could access through their partners. This would add much needed research income, including HERDC income, to the operational budgets of Australian universities that would far exceed any income from the ARC that might be “lost” overseas by supporting international co-investigators on Australian grants.

Key Information
Existing funding policies stipulate that grants awarded by the ARC can only be expended by eligible Australian institutions, although travel to, and by, international co-investigators is an eligible expense. While uncommon, some exemptions to these conditions are allowed to enable the subcontracting of research services to international co-investigators. In most cases though, international co-investigators are required to contribute their time, lab costs, and infrastructure at their own expense. This can no longer be justified by many collaborators, especially when they can collaborate with partners other than Australia, who can fund their contributions.

A two-tiered approach to funding access would create both open and strategic opportunities for collaboration. In its basic form, the first tier, or open level of eligibility, would permit any co-investigator to receive up to 10% of project funds. At the second tier, or strategic level of eligibility, co-investigators could receive up to 50% of project funds if they are based in a country with which Australia has a Joint Science and Technology agreement and enables similar access to funding for Australian-based researchers. This approach would provide Australian agencies, and the councils themselves, with a platform to negotiate with funders overseas, in like-minded and democratic countries, to create a larger, more accessible, global network of reciprocal research funding arrangements.

This proposed funding reform could be incorporated into existing project-based ARC funding guidelines with addition of specific criteria (taking as a model those used by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, the AHRC) such as:

• All projects would be led by a Chief Investigator (CI) based at an eligible Australian research organisation.
• All International Co-Investigators would need to have suitable academic experience and be based at a research organisation of significant research capacity (comparable to the eligible Australian research organisation).
• International Co-Investigator funds could not exceed 10% of the total funding requested unless they are based in a partner country listed by the ARC as eligible to receive up to 50% of the total funding requested.
• International Co-Investigator contributions would need to be clearly defined and costed in the grant application.
• International salaries of International Co-Investigators and research associates could be included in certain circumstances, but indirect institutional and overhead costs would not be eligible.
• If projects include funding for PhD students, these students would need to be enrolled at an Australian university.
• Head of Department support would be needed from the International Co-Investigator’s research organisation.

Recommendations

To help Australia continue to be recognised as a global leader of open and collaborative research and innovation, reform of ARC funding policies is needed. It is recommended that:
1. ARC funding policies are amended to permit Australian project leads to allocate:
a. up to 10% of eligible costs to international co-investigators from any country, and
b. up to 50% of eligible costs to international co-investigators from a partner country named by the ARC.

2. This reform be used to build stronger partnerships with researchers and funding organisations based in like-minded countries where there is potential to strengthen collaboration and create reciprocal access to research funding in those countries.

The recommended reform will ensure our researchers and institutions can attract the best international research talent and capability for the research they lead, and establish a platform from which Australian agencies, and the research councils themselves, could expand the available pool of funding to support the sector’s global research efforts. Noting that:

1. This reform would not reduce the amount of Australian funding available to Australian researchers, nor would additional funding be needed for the international component of any project. Australian project leads would propose what portion of their funds (if any) are needed to secure the best international contributions to the research they lead.

2. It would not require increasing funding to the ARC, nor require them to codify existing funds to support proposed international co-investigator research activity.

3. All projects would observe existing Australian merit-based selection and approval processes making the application of this change administratively light for the ARC.

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?

As per our response in Question 7, the proposed reform to open up ARC funding to international co-investigators could be used as a science diplomacy tool to strengthen beneficial patterns of global collaboration to create reciprocal access to research funding through negotiation with other funding agencies overseas.

This would be an improvement to the current status quo of funding for collaborative research across borders, where international co-investigators either need to successfully negotiate multiple funding mechanisms or rely on niche and relatively small-scale funding programmes to facilitate collaboration.

No matter where we live, our communities expect our researchers and institutions to be at the forefront of addressing the world’s most complex and urgent shared challenges. Knowing this, funding councils around the world should be taking the initiative to create a global research funding network that enables those shared challenges to be addressed, especially when they could do so at the stroke of a pen.

Submission received

13 December 2022

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