Gernot Heiser

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Gernot Heiser

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.

The decision-making power resting with the Minister is an anachronism that enables political interference and undermines the credibility of the peer-review process. It is damaging to the reputation and impact of Australian research. It is also out of step with most OECD countries and should be changed to leaving funding decisions with the ARC and away from political interference. In fact, the principle of a peer-review process aligned with international best practice should be enshrined in law.

Codifying established practice seems a good idea. However, setting priorities and emphasis should remain a government decision, to ensure alignment with the government’s innovation strategy.

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 independence of the ARC from political interference is of critical importance. The CEO as a political appointment is fundamentally at odds with this and the need for merit-based decision making based on a robust peer-review process. A board of eminent researchers and research leaders would be an appropriate model. The Board responsibilities as suggested in the Consultation Paper are appropriate.

Q3. How could the Act be improved to ensure academic and research expertise is obtained and maintained to support the ARC?

How could this be done without the Act becoming overly prescriptive?

“The Act might include reference to expertise and the pre-eminence of academic excellence and peer review, through better definition of the role, coverage and characteristics of Executive Directors, the College of Experts or by other means.” [Consultation Paper]

I fully support this.

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.

Absolutely! As stated earlier, peer-review is the very base of a functional scientific research system, and it should be a legislated requirement that all funding decisions are based on a peer review aligned with international best practice. There should be no ministerial interference in funding decisions.

Furthermore, the Australian research community is too small to support high-quality peer review across the board. There are FOI codes with only one or two internationally recognised researchers, such research is poorly served by the present peer-review process which mostly relies on domestic assessors (largely previous and current grant holders). Proposals in such fields will inevitably be evaluated by poorly qualified assessors, leading to poor decisions. Some smaller countries (I’m aware of SIngapore) source all their peer reviewers internationally. The ARC doing the same would be an excellent step to increase the quality and robustness of the peer review. I therefore recommend a requirement that all peer-reviews be sourced from overseas (or, at the very least, the majority).

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

The NIT should be completely abolished, as it is fundamentally at odds with quality funding decisions, and is out of step with international best practice. The existing Benefits section (which is evaluated by peer reviewers) is enough, and its weight and economic aspects should naturally differ between fundamental (Discovery) and applied (Linkage) programs.

It is important to get researchers to explain the benefits of their work in terms understandable to the public, but this has no place in funding decisions.

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

The administrative burden of the ARC schemes has reached kafkaesque proportions. There is an incredible emphasis on formatting and other minor procedural matters, and grants are rejected on such formalities.

Not only wastes this applicants’ time, universities employ many staff who spend weeks and months of their time checking for minor formatting violations. This is, in the end, a huge waste of taxpayers’ money. In my experience, in the metric of dollars times success rate divided by time spend on an application, the ARC is by far the least efficient funding scheme I have ever dealt with. I regularly review European Union or US funding applications. They consist of a fraction of the paper work but award a multiple of the funds to successful applicants.

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.

I believe that much of the delays in announcing funding outcomes are a result of the need for ministerial sign-off. This should be removed for reasons outlined above, and will in itself result in more timely decisions.

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 can see the value of exercises like ERA (having participated in the 2010 round as a member of the MIC panel) and EI.

In particular the shift from quantity metrics to quality assessments triggered by ERA is extremely valuable, and has definitely led to at least some re-orientation of the internal reward systems of universities. And EI helps strengthen the social license for public research funding.

However, ERA is a very costly process. Furthermore, the ARC’s refusal to accept widely-used evidence undermines this. (Google Scholar citations are far more credible in Computer Science than the classical metric providers, such as Scopus, which ignore many of the highest-impact publication venues, which is why they are largely ignored by computer scientists.)

I have no concrete suggestions on how to improve ERA other than running it less frequently and with a longer time horizon, and follow international community practice regarding metrics. EI is less problematic but should definitely use a longer time window.

Submission received

14 December 2022

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