The ARC -- the Silly Season -- and the RQF. (August 23, 2006)

    The Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Research Council (ARC), Peter Høj, said that because the number of Discovery Grant applications was mounting and had  now exceeded 4,000 the situation for reviewing them was getting out of hand. The job of finding referees for them was getting so tough something had to be done and sooner rather than later.

Professor Høj's solution was to mandate payment of a fee to accompany all applications or alternatively the universities should limit the number of applications.

The suggestion brought forth howls of protest from deputy vice-chancellors for research and they have now been supported by the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop, "If there is a suggestion that we streamline (the process for dealing with applications) or make it more efficient in some way, then I would certainly have a look at that." But she  vetoed any use of application fees to discourage the rapid growth in applications.

On the other hand the suggestion of a preliminary culling of applications prior to sending them out for peer assessment is an approach favoured by DVCs (Research) and such a system is currently in use by a number of journals because of the large number of research papers they receive.

David Siddle, chairman of the Group of Eight DVCs for research. recollects that the old ARC discipline panels eliminated something like 15% of applications as clearly not competitive. "That makes huge inroads into what you have to send out to external assessors," Professor Siddle told The Australian.

Nevertheless, Professor Høj makes a valid point when he says the ARC attempts to get three or four assessors for each application and assuming the RQF began in 2008, its panels might need to assess research portfolios of perhaps 20,000 academics. "You overlay that assessment demand on the normal (ARC) grant processes..."

Various individuals have commented that a well designed Research Quality Framework will be a boon for Australian Research. What Professor Høj implies, whether consciously or not, is that a well designed Research Quality Framework is a contradiction in terms.

The question is will Ms Bishop have the guts to declare that the Emperor has no clothes.