The Australian Research Council itself is a major winner in the Sheil Review of the agency’s act with recommendations that would give it authority over major policy making
Big issues that will be up to the ARC, if Professor Sheil and colleagues recommendations are adopted by the government include,
assessing the overall research performance of individual universities and “depth and capability of researchers”
What is clear on these two is what is not going to happen. The metric-based ERA and anecdotal Engagement and Impact are no more and a metrics-based exercise will not follow, “because of the evidence that such metrics can be biased or inherently flawed in the absence of expert review and interpretation.”
So what is on is that, “the ARC develops a framework for regular evaluation and reporting on the outcomes of the National Competitive Grants Programme over a timeframe that allows the full impact of research funding to be assessed and the public benefit explained.”
So how, will the ARC address Education Minister Jason Clare’s request for “impact data to enhance the reporting on the impact value of grants funded so that more robust evaluations of ARC funded programmes and initiatives can be undertaken,” (CMM August 31)?
What, you ask, like what could have come from the working group the ARC appointed to advise on “a modern data driven assessment model,” (CMM September 28 2022)? But perhaps not now.
Responsibility for “promoting and upholding” research integrity
There are two general approaches on how this should be done, the Pollyanna (“they did not mean to do it and if they did they are such nice researchers they won’t do it again”) and the Tourquemada (“anyone seen the wrack?”).
The ARC generally appears to favour the former -via it (and the NHMRC’s) Australian Research Integrity Committee, which “reviews institutional processes used to manage and investigate potential breaches.”
A review of ARIC (CMM March 7) is said to be complete but is not public. Whatever it decides, the Sheil Review, gives hope to advocates of a national research integrity agency with powers an inquisition – just not much.
“We have made provision for the purpose of the ARC to include promoting and upholding research integrity as per the recommendation from ARIC. We note that this does not mean the ARC has an exclusive role in relation to research integrity or that some of the role of ARC and ARIC may not be incorporated into, or support, other arrangements that have a broader remit at some point in the future.”
“Promoting accessibility of publications and research data”
If this means open access to publicly funded research, adding it as an agency function in the Act can’t hurt – because the ARC to date has not done a lot to extend OA, at least compared to its sibling, the National Health and Medical Research Council, which now requires all new papers based on research it funds to be open access from publication.
The existing ARC policy requires OA 12 months from publication date – but it is up for review in June.
Presumably the ARC is already engaging with Chief Scientist Cathy Foley on her much-anticipated plan for national open access.