The Australian Research Council excluded applicants for the Discovery Early Career Research Award scheme announced last week for the high-crime of mentioning pre-prints in applications

Cue outrage in the research community – and now in parliament. Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi wants the government to advise how many applications were not considered because they breached the new rule and from what fields. And the Senate agrees it should be done, tomorrow.

This is the ownest of ARC own goals. The ARC states that the rule was in the DECRA documents (CMM August 20) but not why. And it could (but probably won’t) explain why it needs the exclusion but the National Health and Medical Research Council does not – the NHMRC went out of its way on Monday to announce pre-prints can be mentioned in applications (CMM yesterday).