News & Views item - September 2005

 

 

The Expert Advisory Group to Brendan Nelson Publishes a Draft of its Preferred Model for a Research Quality Framework and Dr Nelson Sets a Cat Among the Academic Pigeons. (September 11, 2005)

    The pace of motion with regard to the formulation of a Research Quality Framework has been stepped up over the past two months but how much action has been achieved is debatable. This past Friday the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, released a 25 page document which is in reality a framework for a "preferred model" for a Research Quality Framework: Assessing the quality and impact of research in Australia.

 

According to Dr Nelson, "Once implemented, the RQF will provide the Australian Government with the basis for redistributing research funding to ensure that areas of the highest quality of research are rewarded. This will involve all of the Institutional Grants Scheme (IGS) and at least fifty per cent of the Research Training Scheme (RTS)."

 

But what grabbed the immediate attention of the media as well as the academic community was this paragraph in Dr Nelson's media release -- which also is part of the Minister's forward:

Once implemented, the RQF will provide the Australian Government with the basis for redistributing research funding to ensure that areas of the highest quality of research are rewarded. This will involve all of the Institutional Grants Scheme (IGS) and at least fifty per cent of the Research Training Scheme (RTS). My Department will conduct a process, with the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council, to develop the way in which the outcomes of the RQF will impact on the funding distributed by the research councils. It is expected that any impact on research council funding would not occur until after the first RQF assessment process has been completed. (our emphasis).

Following on the heels of the sacking of the Australian Research Council Board and the addition for ill defined reasons of  conservative columnist P.P. McGuinness, media personality Ross Symonds and former High Court judge Daryl Dawson to the ARC's Committee -- set up several years ago specifically to advise the board on the quality of the grants process, for example, to look at matters of conflicts of interest among assessors and standards of applications across the board -- the disquiet of researchers is understandable.

 

Dr Nelson's follow up statement to the Australian Financial Review, "it is my clear intention that we will also be building a model to apply the RQF, or a variation of it, to the ARC competitive funding" was clearly incendiary when he added that while, "That's not going to happen in 2007... [t]he reality is that . . . we have institutions that are being funded to do research which is, in my opinion, of inferior quality." The Minister did not give examples, but the intention to question the competence of the current peer review process was unmistakable.

 

ARC chief executive officer Peter Høj had earlier this year told a University of Queensland forum that the competitive grants distributed by the council should not be affected by changes which would result from the implementation of the RQF.

 

This past Friday unnamed members of the Expert Advisory Group expressed their anger to the AFR that "Dr Nelson had not consulted them about applying [the RQF] to the grants councils, which already used peer review," while the chief executive of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, John Mullarvey said, "A change in the funding process of these bodies would be a major concern for the sector."
 

But to get back to the body of the document describing The Preferred Model; it defines the scope of the RQF as, "The RQF will include all publicly funded research conducted within Australia’s university sector and Publicly Funded Research Agencies." As stated it does not exclude ARC or NH&MRC funding, but what is unknown is whether or not the wording is that of the EAG or was written in by DEST (without consulting the EAG) prior to release of the preferred model but after the deliberations of the EAG in August.

 

The graphic of the preferred model shows the outline of the model proposed for discussion.

 

 

The Oversighting Committee is obviously central to determining the functioning of the RQF. As the model is currently depicted (above), it will be directly determined by a federal department presumably at the discretion of its minister.

 

 

One aspect under consideration has been the role that might be played by the RFQ in so-called third-stream funding.

The EAG has agreed that activities that involve successful application of the original research of others (eg knowledge diffusion or transfer) and broader activities that stimulate and facilitate knowledge transfer by universities to business and society are not a focus for the RQF. However, the EAG agrees that these types of initiatives are important and could be addressed through the introduction of “Third Stream” funding.

However, considerable weight is placed in the model on the "broader impact" of research to be resourced through the RQF's recommendations where its broader impact is defined as "the extent to which research is successfully applied - broader impact or usefulness relates to the recognition by qualified end-users that quality research has been successfully applied."

 

With regard to assessment periods the following cycles are suggested

 

 

However, a major bone of contention between Australia's major research universities (Group of Eight) and many of the other 30 public universities remains with "The Preferred Model" advocating assessments of groups of sufficient size as to allow anonymity of the members while the Go8 maintains "that the assessment must focus on the quality of the research output of researchers. That is, actual performance should be directly exposed to independent, internationally credible peer assessors."

 

Finally, during the remainder of September there will be "consultation on the preferred RQF model. This involves seeking written feedback on the paper as well as a series of briefing sessions by the EAG with key stakeholders. Following the fourth meeting of the EAG scheduled for 17 October 2005, the EAG will report to the Minister on preferred model(s) for assessing research quality and its associated impact."