Anonymous #29

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Anonymous #29

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.

I recommend redistributing funding support by increasing substantially the number of supported projects. Big grants are less important for research than the possibility for researchers of developing their work continuously over the years: for this, receiving a smaller contribution, e.g. for travels and collaborations, is essential, and this small support, not requiring personnel, must be made easily available.

Also, small grants for travel and collaborations avoid the 0/1 risk of being either funded for a (possibly too) large amount or not funded at all.

The fund applications can also be streamlined: a first round presenting only the CV could be very useful to quickly assess the competitiveness of the potential candidates, which, after this initial quick selection, would be admitted to a second round of more specific projects. In this way, we avoiding asking everybody to write long projects unless they are likely to be supported on the basis of the applicant's quality.

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.

Please streamline the governance and remove political representation from it.

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?

Reduce the number of detailed and abstract guidelines. Focus on 'investigator-driven' and 'bottom-up' research. Avoid interferences of groups of power, finance, and industries.

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.

1. Allow small grants encouraging national and international collaborations that are accessible to a large number of researchers.

2. Streamline applications, having two rounds: round 1 based on a quick assessment of the CV of the proponent; the selected researchers would then access round 2, presenting a detailed proposal which, at that point, has high chances of receiving at least partial financial support.

3. Foresee partial financial support of good but unsuccessful projects.

4. Avoid political representation in committees.

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

Streamline the submission process, making the applications less time consuming, and provide partial financial support also to unsuccessful applications, by possibly reducing the unnecessarily large grants.
Focus on research proposed directly by the researchers, avoiding interferences from industries.

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

Applications are unnecessarily convoluted and repetitive. Simplify the process and allow for partial support (e.g. sponsoring the travels without additional personnel).

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.

Allow small grants encouraging national and international collaborations, focused on travel of researchers, even without additional personnel.

Give at least partial financial support to all the good projects, by possibly reducing over-financed projects.

Have a two-round assessments, with a streamlined selection in the first round solely based on the proponent's previous accomplishment, and a second round accessible only to the selected proponents in which research projects are presented, with the idea of allowing to the second step only the researchers with high chances of receiving at least partial support.

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?

Forget about data driven approaches.
Focus on the quality of researchers.
Have technical interviews with the research proponents to assess their quality in a deeper way rather than relying on boxes to tick.

Q9. With respect to the ARC’s capability to evaluate research excellence and impact:

(a) How can the ARC best use its expertise and capability in evaluating the outcomes and benefits of research to demonstrate the ongoing value and excellence of Australian research in different disciplines and/or in response to perceived problems?

(b) What elements would be important so that such a capability could inform potential collaborators and end-users, share best practice, and identify national gaps and opportunities?

(c) Would a data-driven methodology assist in fulfilling this purpose?

Forget about data driven approaches.
Focus on the quality of researchers.
Have technical interviews with the research proponents to assess their quality in a deeper way rather than relying on boxes to tick.

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?

Don't judge researchers and projects "on paper".
Don't judge researchers and projects by ticking boxes.
Interview the candidates whenever necessary.
Remove industry and politics from research panels.
Make research and education independent from industry and politics.
Give at least partial support to good projects.
Establish small grants supporting national and international travel for collaborations.

Submission received

09 December 2022

Publishing statement

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