Australasian Association of Philosophy and Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy

Name (Individual/Organisation)

Australasian Association of Philosophy and Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy

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 Terms of Reference for the Review correctly point out: “Successive governments have wanted to see demonstrable value for research investment and that areas of national significance are adequately funded and reap dividends for society and the economy.” These goals are important. However, it is also important that these goals are not then interpreted in a way that makes it difficult to secure funding for pure basic research. As the Consultation Paper for the Review rightly acknowledges, “The ARC also plays a critical role in having a component of its funding dedicated to Discovery or fundamental research.” An emphasis on pure basic research needs to be retained, and measurements of impact and success need to recognise this. There is a growing perception amongst researchers that ARC Discovery projects now need to have a substantial applied content in order to be competitive for funding – this risks diverting researchers’ attention away from the pure basic research on which applied research depends. It would be good for the ARC to allay these concerns by emphasising its commitment to supporting high-quality pure basic research.

Since “Discovery” and “Linkage” are the names of particular research programs which may be subject to change, it may be inappropriate to refer to them by name in the ARC Act. However, the Act would be improved if it made explicit mention of the “critical role” that the ARC plays in funding pure basic research, as acknowledged in the Consultation Paper. This should be mentioned as a core function of the ARC. This is the foundational research whose applications are not always immediately obvious, but it forms the foundation on which applied research depends. Explicitly acknowledging support for this foundational research in the ARC Act will help to foster the health of the overall research ecosystem in Australia. This feature of research should be considered a benefit of the research and in the national interest.

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?

This is an excellent question. In the 2001 Act, the only mention of academic research experts in connection with the ARC is at paragraph 14(2): “The Minister must, in making appointments under this section, try to ensure that the composition of the Board reflects the breadth of academic, industry and community interests in the outcomes of research.” The Act would be improved by specifying: assessments of research quality administered by the ARC will be informed by academic expert review.

Wording of the form suggested above leaves appropriate room for consideration of the form that academic expert review should take, in connection with the different forms of assessment of research quality administered by the ARC (grant programs, ERA, etc.), while articulating the principle that assessments of research quality must be informed by those with the appropriate expertise to make them.

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.

Yes, as per Q3. Again, this is an excellent question for the Review to be raising.

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

Efforts have been made to estimate the dollar cost of failed research grants in relation to the NHMRC. In their 2013 paper, Herbert, Barnett and Graves estimated that 550 years of researchers’ time was spent in the preparation of grants for one NHMRC round. Since that scheme then had a success rate of only 20.5%, this meant that four centuries of effort went into the preparation of grant applications that went nowhere. They put the cost of this at $66 million dollars (Danielle L Herbert, Adrian G Barnett, Nicholas Graves. 2013. Funding: Australia's grant system wastes time. Nature. 495(7441):314. doi: 10.1038/495314d). But in 2013 the NHMRC awarded $811 million in grants, so the opportunity costs of the scheme were only about 8% of the total awarded.


By contrast, the ARC’s biggest grant program for the Humanities and Creative Arts, the Discovery Program, awarded only $13.5 million for projects commencing in 2023. Using similar estimates for time involved in the preparation of applications as in the Herbert, Barnett & Graves study, we estimate that $4.5 million in resources was wasted in the preparation of failed ARC Discovery applications in the area of Humanities and Creative Arts for that round alone. Because the funds awarded in Discovery Grants in the Humanities are so modest in relation to those in medical Discovery Grants, the opportunity costs for the scheme are much, much higher – one third of the value of the grants awarded.

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.

a) In New Zealand’s Marsden Grant system, applicants first submit a brief Expression Of Interest. Projects that are unlikely to be competitive in relation to the total field are weeded out at this stage, with only some EOIs receiving an invitation for a full application (see: https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/funds-and-opportunities/marsden/marsden-fund-application-process/submitting-a-proposal/). Adopting such a process will help eliminate the significant levels of resources wasted on the preparation and assessment of grant applications. Though hidden from view, the level of waste is appallingly high. In a system that funds fewer than 1 in 5 applications, a larger-than-necessary proportion of Australia’s research capacity is spent on preparing unsuccessful grant applications rather than doing research.

The AAP submits that a competitive grant scheme that consumes (at a minimum) $4.5 million in resources to allocate $13.5 million is a scheme that needs to be reconsidered. We believe the Marsden Grant scheme provides a better alternative.

Sweden’s Riksbankens Jubileumsfond for the Advancement of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and the US-based John Templeton Foundation provide other models worth considering, in which there is a 2-stage application process with an initial less burdensome qualifying stage. In addition, the application form could be more concise and avoid duplication.

b) The Act itself is not the best place to specify particular process improvements. However, it would help to incentivise these improvements if the Act made explicit mention of the importance of the ARC’s adopting efficient and cost-effective methods of research evaluation, that take account of its core function of supporting Australian-based research. This needs to be carefully worded. The inefficiencies in the current research administration environment are not within the ARC itself, but occur when the opportunity costs of research administration and evaluation in terms of lost time of academic researchers are not properly accounted for.

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?

In recent years, there has been a strengthening view in the Australian university community that the time and effort expended on measuring research performance through the ERA and Impact & Engagement exercises is disproportionate relative to the levels of associated research funding. This provides a strong case for streamlining our systems of research performance assessment. However, moving to a purely quantitative measure of research performance through bibliometric data would be problematic for our discipline, and significant work would need to be done to develop quantitative metrics appropriate for the HASS disciplines. While the administrative burdens imposed in a peer review system are significant, the case for retaining peer review as a method of evaluation of research quality in the humanities remains sound. Peer review could be more tightly focused on a smaller selection of works.

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?

In order to ensure appropriate capability to evaluate research excellence and impact, there needs to be adequate representation from all disciplines on the panels. In particular, there needs to be more than just one representative and there needs to be parity of representation.

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?

Many excellent projects in the Humanities simply do not cost enough to qualify for ARC funding and therefore receive no support at all. Many Philosophy researchers, like other humanities research colleagues, would benefit greatly from the provision of relatively modest amounts of research funding directed towards research assistance, conference travel and/or targeted teaching relief. There is a danger that one-size-fits-all grant programs operating with a single set of rules across all academic disciplines works in a way that does not reflect the resourcing needs of all disciplines. We could get much better outcomes for Humanities and Social Science in our competitive grant schemes by funding more projects, each of which costs less than the current minimum thresholds for Discovery and Linkage grants.

The important competitive grant schemes for philosophers (and Humanities researchers more broadly) are those that offer temporary research fellowships for individuals (DECRA, Future Fellows) and those that fund research projects. The former work well enough and – thanks to the international standing of Australian philosophy – fellowship applicants in our discipline do better than average. The funding of research projects is another matter.

The ARC’s Discovery and Linkage schemes operate with the same rules across all discipline areas, but the costs of research are not comparable across all areas. The minimum funding per year for an ARC Discovery Grant is $30,000 with a maximum of $500,000 per year

There is a case for introducing under the ARC umbrella a discipline-specific scheme that retains rigorous assessment processes but has higher success rates and lower funding limits, with a corresponding reduction in the application workload. Here, an example worth considering is the Insight Program administered by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. This program is divided into Stream A and Stream B for low- and high-cost research projects in social sciences and humanities (both of which are inexpensive relative to the cost of STEM projects). The lower and upper thresholds for Stream A projects are $7,000 and $100,000 (=A$ 7,142–102,027). Stream B funding ranges from $100,001–400,000 and the duration of the funding for both streams is 2 to 5 years. Both streams are subject to the same assessment process, but the success rate for projects in Stream A is higher.

The SSHRC grant scheme would be wholly inappropriate for Engineering or Biomedical research. These sums barely get our colleagues in Science or Medical faculties started. But they are just the right size for research in Humanities and Social Sciences and this is why it makes sense to have grant bodies that are specific to very different families of disciplines.

Submission received

14 December 2022

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