A Wake-up Call for The ARC but Will Peter Høj and His Masters Listen. (June 7, 2006)

    The wheels of the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop's Research Quality Framework Development Advisory Group (RQFDAG), chaired by Chief Scientist, Jim Peacock, are grinding exceeding slow (it held its first meeting last week) trying to shape a worthwhile model for the RQF. While the chairman issued no media release The Australian's Dorothy Illing and Catherine Armitage report, "It is understood discussion was mostly on the time frame for the massive project that will seek to measure the quality and impact of publicly funded research."

Meanwhile, universities are expending resources in trying to second guess the ultimate result so that they will be able to best place themselves to receive top dollar.

For example, Sydney University Vice-Chancellor Gavin Brown told The Australian, "We have invested $5 million this year in new research appointments, strengthening our research across the board, as the best strategy for dealing with the research quality framework."

That at least would seem to have merit.

On the other hand say Illing and Armitage, "Some universities have been conducting RQF trials, despite not knowing which model will be adopted. Others, such as Curtin University of Technology, have had special RQF officers in place for more than 12 months and have been running seminars and workshops to prepare staff.

And then there are some interesting observations by Dr Grit Laudel who studied at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, took her PhD in Sociology at the University of Bielefeld, Germany and since 2001 is a Research Fellow at the Australian National University, Research School of Social Sciences, Research Evaluation and Policy Project.

Dr Laudel's latest research project, "Promoting and Hindering Conditions for Grant Acquisition" has as its principal finding that dwindling university funding in Australia and reliance on the ARC as the sole source for external funding affected research outcomes.

She told The Australian's Lisa Macnamara, "[Researchers] rely heavily on the ARC and this makes them more vulnerable to all the regulations of the ARC," and the fact the success rate of applications is about 20 per cent in obtaining ARC grants tends to stultify the proposals presented; scientists, in Australia and Germany, avoided research that was deemed "risky" or "innovative" to have a greater chance of attracting funding from bodies such as the ARC.

One scientist told Dr Laudel, "When there has been funding, it's usually inadequate because you never get what you ask for, and that means that things are delayed while you try and fit the project in to the available funds."

As a result, Laudel finds that academics often embarked on "cheap" research by cutting corners in both research and result checking. "In the experimental sciences it's very important that you check your results, but [for example] some left out two or three different methods for checking the results. In the social sciences people cut down on the number of interviews they did to save money."

And Dr Laudel had this advice -- the ARC should focus less on applied research and predetermined study areas to allow for more variety into the system, "The ARC has copied other countries like Germany and the UK which has these priority areas such as nanotechnology. It is a problem when everyone is doing [the same] research."

One of the matters that the ARC has avoided in publicising is just what proportion of its funding is used for fundamental research and how it compared to that of say the US National Science Foundation. A question that is avoided is just how much of the research funded by the ARC is done in other first world nation's by the private sector.

Quite simply that is of consequence when comparing Australia's public sector research support with its cohort.