Message from the CEO

Throughout the challenges created by COVID-19 and other events, the ARC remains committed to supporting the Australian research sector.

In 2020 a range of effects are being felt across the research sector. At this time it is important that we continue to foster knowledge and innovation that will benefit the Australian community through funding the highest quality research.

The ARC’s priorities continue to include assuring all researchers that their unique circumstances, relative to research opportunity, will be considered in the ARC’s assessment processes; supporting early and mid-career researchers, who can be particularly vulnerable due to caring and parental responsibilities; ensuring that the ARC is engaged in sector research and analysis to inform our policies and processes; and pursuing meaningful policy changes, within the current research environment.

To ensure the ARC provides flexible, effective and practical ways to help researchers to continue to participate in ARC schemes during these times, we have focussed on providing a range of support systems for researchers. These include providing updated pre-award guidance, putting in place specific application extensions for the DECRA and Future Fellowships schemes, and updating our Research Opportunity and Performance Evidence (ROPE) categories to account for significant career interruptions. I hope you take the time to read more about this support we are providing in the article below, Supporting the Australian Research Sector during COVID-19.

Since the last edition of ARChway was issued in June, the Minister for Education, The Hon. Dan Tehan has announced a number of National Competitive Grants Program scheme rounds: $44.2 million to fund 14 new Australian Laureate Fellowships; 90.5 million to fund 100 ARC Future Fellowships; $25 million to fund five new ARC Industrial Transformation Research Hubs; and $24 million to fund five new ARC Industrial Transformation Research Centres. Soon we will prepare for the outcomes of further upcoming grants rounds including Linkage Projects, Discovery Projects, Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards, and our new Special Research Initiative for Australian Society, History and Culture.

As always, I would like to update you as to a number of important ARC happenings on the current consultations front. 

This year, the ARC is undertaking a comprehensive review of Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) and the Engagement and Impact Assessment (EI). The purpose of the review is enable the ARC to simplify and streamline the programs, take advantage of recent developments in technology and big data, ensure the programs continue to reflect world’s best practice and respond to the ongoing needs of the university sector, government and the public for a robust evaluation of Australian university research quality, impact and engagement. I encourage you to provide your views via a survey or written submission before the closing date of 12 October 2020, and you can find more details in the article below.

Advancing gender equality in the research workforce also remains a priority for the ARC.  We recognise this is a particularly difficult time for the sector, with broad-reaching impacts and demands on institutions and individuals. In late 2019, the ARC undertook consultation with the sector on increasing female participation in research, centred around three initiatives:

• ensuring women submit at least fifty per cent of applications in the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award scheme by 2023
• achieving gender parity for membership of the ARC College of Experts by 2023 and on Selection Advisory Committees by 2025, and
• reporting publicly by institution, on the proportion of women included in applications for ARC funding. 

The ARC will continue to work with stakeholders to encourage progress in supporting women in the research sector, in the midst of many priorities.

I hope that this update provides some continued reassurance that the ARC is continuing to be flexible and is listening and responding to the needs of the sector during these challenging and unprecedented times.

Professor Sue Thomas

Image: Professor Sue Thomas
Credit: Norman Plant Photography

Supporting the Australian research sector during COVID-19

The ARC is committed to supporting the Australian research sector and is focused on continuing to provide flexible, effective and practical measures to ensure researchers can continue to participate in ARC schemes.

2020 has presented considerable challenges and it is important to reiterate the mechanisms we have in place to support researchers preparing applications [....]

> Read the full article for important information on how the ARC is supporting researchers during COVID, including pre award guidance, updates to ROPE, and minimal changes to Grant Guidelines

Update to ARC Conflict of Interest policy

The ARC Conflict of Interest and Confidentiality Policy has been updated to clarify the types of personal interests that researchers are required to identify and disclose. Researchers will need to provide this information when they are on an application for ARC research funding, or a member of the ARC's College of Experts or a Selection Advisory Committee.

Information about a range of personal interests will be gathered through a researcher’s profile in the ARC’s Research Management System (RMS). The new questions are designed to support transparency of personal interests and to provide a mechanism to declare relationships and support to the Administering Organisation and the ARC.  The information will support Administering Organisations in implementing the Guidelines to Counter Foreign Interference in the Australian Higher Education Sector. 

Completion of these new profile questions will be required by any researcher named in applications for all future National Competitive Grant Program (NCGP) grant opportunities. This information will be visible to those with research office staff access and ARC staff. A researcher’s responses will not be visible to other participants on the application or assessors that review the application. ARC peer review processes will continue to be based on assessing the merit of each application against the assessment criteria set out in Grant Guidelines. 

RMS will prevent applications being submitted to the ARC if these new questions have not been completed by all participants, so please ensure your researcher profile is up to date and complete. More information about these new questions and advice on how to respond is provided in the grant opportunity ‘Instructions to Applicants’, published on GrantConnect. 

Have your say on the ERA and EI assessments

Earlier this year, the ARC commenced a review of Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) and its companion exercise, the Engagement and Impact Assessment (EI) (the Review). The Review will ensure these national assessments continue to reflect world’s best practice in research evaluation and respond to the needs of the university sector, government and the wider community. It will also seek to simplify and streamline the assessment process and take advantage of new technologies and approaches to the application of big data.

To support the Review, the ARC has established an expert Advisory Committee to provide advice to the ARC CEO on the future of the ERA and EI Assessment. The Committee members have extensive experience in research administration and evaluation, with backgrounds ranging from the university research sector, government, industry and other end-users of research.

It is vital the Review identifies the views of stakeholders so the ARC can take an informed approach to ERA and EI moving forward.

The Review is examining all aspects of the assessments, and public consultation is now underway with a consultation paper available on the ARC website. Stakeholders are encouraged to provide their views via a survey or written submission before the closing date of 12 October 2020.

The Review is scheduled for completion by mid-2021.

Further information, including the Terms of Reference and members of the ERA EI Review Advisory Committee, is available at www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia/era-ei-review 

For more information on the Review, please contact the ARC via email: ERAEIReview@arc.gov.au or the ERA Helpdesk: 02 6287 6755.

Implementation of 2020 ANZSRC codes

The ARC has developed a plan to adopt the updated 2020 Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC) codes into the Research Management System (RMS) for National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) application and peer review activities.

Understanding current pressures on universities, our aim is to provide enough time for the research sector to plan for, and manage, this change and minimise burden on researchers and research offices in managing the transition.

The ARC sought feedback from Research Office Directors on a proposed staged approach: 

 •  This year we will implement the 2020 codes into RMS user     
profiles only, so researchers can commence selecting the 2020 codes (alongside retaining their 2008 codes) in their individual profiles.

 •  We will commence using the 2020 codes in next year’s College of Expert nomination round.

 •  The 2020 codes will be introduced into NCGP grant application forms for schemes opening from September 2021.

We will not introduce any 2020 ANZSRC code changes into application forms for any scheme rounds that are currently open or are due to open in late 2020 or early 2021. 

As we reach each new stage of the implementation process, further advice and instructions on how to select the 2020 ANZSRC codes will be published by the ARC. Look out for updates through our ARC Network Messages.

Introducing ‘Research Grants Services’

The ARC is now providing grants administration services to other Government entities who are managing grant programs focussed on the university and research sector. We are providing a standardised research grants process through our Research Management System (RMS) that we are calling Research Grants Services.

What is RMS?
The ARC’s RMS is an IT end-to-end grants administration system that allows the ARC to accept applications; have applications assessed, through peer review, by experts in relevant research disciplines; rank applications and to offer, execute and manage grants. RMS is an intuitive, powerful bespoke system. It is the ARC’s primary form of interaction with university researchers and research offices and currently supports over 110,000 users for ARC grants.
 
Non-ARC funded grants management
Recently, significant enhancements to RMS have been made to strengthen, streamline and bring greater flexibility to our research granting processes. These improvements allow the unique ability to provide effective and efficient grants administration across the whole spectrum of the research endeavour through its people and IT means that the ARC is able to support other Australian Government entities with research grant programs. 

As a specialist provider of research-based grants management services RMS offers a flexible, robust, stable, innovative platform for administering research grants. This will provide other entities with reliable access to the ARC’s systems and experts through a streamlined end-to-end grants administration process to assist with the management of their grants, under their charter (separate from ARC-administered grants)—achieving efficiencies for Government, and drawing on the technical capability, experience and expertise of the ARC to help ensure that the best research and researchers are funded.
 
Stay tuned for more information about Research Grants Services.

#QandARC

ARC Centres of Excellence empower researchers and scientists to make important progress in fields that will equip Australia and the rest of the world with the capacity to overcome the significant challenges facing humanity and the planet in the 21st century and beyond.

But who are the people at the forefront of knowledge creation in these vital fields?

#QandARC, a new video series initiative instigated and led by ARC Centres of Excellence researchers will take you behind the scenes at leading universities and institutions, and offer a unique chance to get to know some of the brightest, and most curious, minds in the country.

You’ll learn what motivates them and how they work together to make a big impact on the global stage.

Visit the ARC’s YouTube playlist to see more and use #QandARC to follow the series on social media. 

Making a Difference - Outcomes of ARC supported research

The 2019-2020 edition of Making a Difference—Outcomes of ARC supported research was released in August and is available online in interactive flipbook format and as a printable pdf.

Our annual publication highlights a selection of diverse outcomes from the last twelve months of research projects funded by the Australian Government through the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program.

Legacy website for ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics

In 2014, The University of Adelaide received $38 million in funding over seven years through the ARC Centres of Excellence scheme for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale Biophotonics (CNBP), to discover new approaches to measure nanoscale dynamic phenomena in living systems.

The Centre’s mission was to ‘discover new approaches to measure nanoscale dynamic phenomena in living systems’ and the CNBP had definitely achieved this and more as their journey now comes to an end.

CNBP’s scientific legacy is captured in a new website.

See how researchers discovered chemical, nanomaterial and fibre-based light responsive tools that sense and image the molecular origins of Reproductive Success, Wound Healing and Persistent Pain. We invite you to explore the website and learn more about the CNBP journey. 
 

FEATURE ARTICLES

The changing workforce under COVID-19

Professor Sharon Parker is a John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University, whose research focus is the design of jobs and work, and the vital role that this design has in delivering a thriving economy with a healthy, flourishing workforce.

Awarded $2.9m through the ARC’s 2016 Kathleen Fitzpatrick Australian Laureate Fellowship, Professor Parker has used this research funding to establish the Centre for Transformative Work Design, conducting high quality, independent and innovative research to understand the role of work design in generating healthy and productive work.. [...]

> Read the full article

Image: Professor Sharon Parker
Credit: Centre for Transformative Work Design

Powering up an international collaboration with Japan

Many ARC researchers are experts at building industry support to strengthen an existing research program, which can also provide a pathway to industry employment for new graduates.

Professor Yusuke Yamauchi is one of a small number of ARC-supported researchers who are making these links directly with industry partners in Japan, and he has a vision of a bright future in manufacturing collaboration between Australian and Japanese industry.

Professor Yamauchi, who is currently based at the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) and School of Chemical Engineering at The University of Queensland, arrived in Australia in 2016 to begin an ARC Future Fellowship at the University of Wollongong to work on the development of novel conductive nano-porous materials towards energy and environmental applications, and to solve the problem of scaling up their production for use in industry. Such porous materials, which contain complex holes and conductive pore wall structures at the nanoscale, have a number of intriguing electrochemical properties but have been challenging to produce at the scale required for industry applications.

> Read the full article

Image: Professor Yusuke Yamauchi
Credit: Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN)

What’s the pandemic forecast?

What’s going to happen next with the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia? What about a few weeks from now? What about in different states and territories?

These are the questions a team of researchers from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers (ACEMS) are helping to answer.

Since March, the group has been busy modelling the pandemic along with other researchers across the nation. Every week, the results of that modelling shows up on the desks of Australia's top leaders who are making critical decisions about things like social distancing, whether to reopen economies, or keep people at home [...] 

> Read the full article

Image: Professor Rob Hyndman
Credit: ACEMS