SHAPE Futures Australian Humanities and Social Sciences Early- and Mid- Career Researcher Network

Response to Consultation on the Australian NGCP Proposal

Prepared by Sarah Midford, Alexandra Ridgway and Anna Kosovac

Overview

The SHAPE Futures Network welcomes the proposed changes to the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP). We commend the ARC on its efforts to increase opportunities for early and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) within ARC funded schemes, including for those from Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) disciplines. We particularly appreciate the efforts to address the limited funding opportunities for researchers who have recently completed their PhDs. We are pleased to see that the new scheme offers more opportunities to EMCRS, especially through the Initiate grant, and supports the inclusion of mentoring alongside funding opportunities. This dual approach ensures that EMCRs receive the guidance and resources necessary to thrive in their research careers across the reimagined landscape of the ARC’s NCGP schemes.

SHAPE Futures would like to commend the ARC for recognising the importance of HASS disciplines. It is crucial that HASS research is supported equitably under the new scheme to ensure HASS research can contribute the essential human knowledge required for a prosperous Australian future. It is at the nation’s peril that we do not adequately fund Humanities and Social Sciences alongside technology, manufacturing, and STEM research. 

Furthermore, SHAPE applauds the ARC’s commitment to Indigenous research and support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars which will help to expand career opportunities, strengthen leadership, and ensure research is conducted with cultural integrity and meaningful community engagement.

SHAPE Futures offers its strong support of the ARC’s emphasis on fostering more blue sky thinking and the increased value placed on higher risk projects. This approach encourages innovative and bold research ideas that have the potential to generate significant advancements and new knowledge. We are very supportive of the focus on collaborative projects and the role of EMCRs within this, including in salary-funded leadership positions which offer career development and help to foster relationships between junior and senior staff. However, while combining the intent behind the Discovery and Linkage programs in the current scheme, the ARC runs risk of priority being given to industry research and not investigator led research, which is essential to the initiation of new ideas that are theoretically rather than economically driven.

While overall, SHAPE Futures is supportive of the NCGP Proposal, consultation with our members has identified some suggestions for improvement and areas where clarification is sought. 

Furthermore, we welcome further detail in the eligibility and assessment requirements of each scheme to be able to provide refined feedback on EMCR impacts.

Further Exploration and Clarification Sought

1. Issues of Equity: While the increased focus on supporting Indigenous researchers is strongly supported by SHAPE, we are concerned that other issues of equity are not considered. For instance, the proposed model does not mention gender quotas (as used by other funding bodies, such as the NHMRC). We contend that it is essential to implement gender quotas to ensure equitable representation and support for researchers of all genders across all schemes. Similarly, we would like to ensure that ROPE is fairly weighted across the schemes to ensure those with career interruptions, those in precarious employment and those institutionally disadvantaged have an equitable chance of being awarded funding. 
2. Assessment Processes: SHAPE Futures would like to express our appreciation for the acknowledgment by the ARC of the pressures of peer review, and while we appreciate the goal of streamlining assessment processes, we would like the proposed processes clarified in more detail. While streamlining is essential, improving grant assessment should also consider other factors. For instance, SHAPE would like to encourage the ARC to explore the possibility of using repeat assessors across years, similar to the approach used in the US. This allows applicants to improve their projects meaningfully through the assessment process. We also warmly encourage the ARC to explore the possibility of providing remuneration for grant reviewers, as is common in national grant schemes in other countries like Poland. This could also allow early and mid-career researchers (EMCRs) a greater role in reviewing.

Supporting Sustainable Career Pathways for EMCRs

Addressing Gaps at Postdoctoral Level

In the current ARC research ecosystem, Fellowships imply there is a career pathway for researchers. In reality, very few researchers are able to progress through the fellowship schemes and adopt this career path. The new proposal is a welcome disruption that offers new opportunities, but while the new grant ecosystem goes some way to developing a more equitable and inclusive range of opportunities for researchers, we believe it could go further. It does not, for instance, solve the problem of supporting research pathways for post PhDs or ECRs who often lack funding to progress their research further and develop their track recordsin the critical early stages of their research career. Early pipeline development is required. 

Recommendation 1: ARC supported training scheme for researchers in the final stages of their PhD and those recently completed, but not yet attached to an institution for post-doctoral research, that supports the development of independent research track records aligned to the NCGP schemes.

There is a noticeable gap in the training pipeline between the completion of a PhD and the availability of postdoctoral funding. Permitting EMCRs to apply alongside more senior researchers within the same schemes opens up opportunities for junior scholars, which SHAPE supports. However, an unintentional consequence of this may be a situation where more senior researchers are perceived as more competitive and ECRs and/or MCRs are overlooked. This could lead to ‘bracket creep’, which has been a persistent feature of the current ARC Fellowship scheme.

Recommendation 2: Set quotas on the number of ECR and MCR recipients across all applicable schemes to minimise ‘bracket creep’.

There is opportunity to ensure that the Initiate scheme addresses gaps post-PhD completion: the point at which there is a significant loss of researchers in the system due to the small numbers of grant and employment opportunities for researchers at this level. There are disproportionate numbers of researchers lost upon completion of HASS PhDs (compared to STEM equivalents) due to the lack of post-doctoral opportunities available. 

Recommendation 3: The Initiate scheme should allow PhD candidates to apply when their PhD has been submitted, but not yet conferred, to allow funding for excellent projects at the point when funding is needed. This mitigates the loss of project ideas that would otherwise need to wait for a year, placing the researcher in a precarious position, likely to result in the applicant leaving the HE sector in search of alternative employment.

The proposed schemes will significantly change the way competitive research funding is distributed by the ARC. SHAPEwould like further consideration to be invested in exploring the ways universities currently invest in their research workforce, which will need to fundamentally shift in parallel to ensure sustainable research pathways. Doing so will ensure academics in teaching and research roles can feel confident to plan their research careers across Australian universities in line with the ARC’s NCGP schemes; ensuring research excellence is part of sustainable academic careers for the foreseeable future. 

The objective of the changes should be to support a world class researcher workforce within the Australian university framework. If Australia is to retain or attract the best national and international talent then the awards will need to support recipients to succeed within Australian the university workforce, and/or to develop skills that promote sector mobility.

Recommendation 4: Grant recipients should have the opportunity to undertake a teaching and service fraction within their grant period (grants can be extended it on a pro-rata basis to accommodate this), so that researchers can become embedded in the culture of their universities and part of the business-as-usual workforce. This will develop skills to advance an academic career within the university, foster future institutional collegiality and collaboration. It will incentivise universities to invest in staff who will integrate into T&R positions upon a grant’s completion. To ensure this does not lead to exploitation of grant recipients’ time, a cap on the time dedicated to non-research related activities should be set and no more than 0.3FTE should be dedicated to work outside the research project.

Across all schemes, but particularly within the Breakthrough and Collaborate Schemes, which are likely to be led by more senior colleagues, embedding EMCR training opportunities within projects, could lead to junior colleagues taking on roles that do not adequately develop leadership skills. 

Recommendation 5: An EMCR training scheme be embedded across all schemes to provide targeted skills development and opportunities that support researchers to move into research leadership, move laterally across sectors or into industry, and/or join the regular academic workforce within universities upon completion of the project. EMCRs should be able to progress to CIs on collaborative projects over its duration based on the successful movement through training opportunities discussed above.

Initiate Scheme

SHAPE supports the Initiate scheme, which provides for an additional 700 grants when compared to the current DECRA scheme. We are highly supportive of the increased number of fellowships available. We can also see value in how the scheme allows successful recipients an opportunity to buy out their teaching responsibilities with more flexibility, as universities can consider replacements that are not on continuing positions, enabling fellows to commit to their research. We particularly welcome the call for interdisciplinary research in this scheme, although call for further information on the way interdisciplinary proposals will be considered equitably by interdisciplinary scholars who can see the value in research across disciplines.

We acknowledge that there are some members of the academic community who are fearful of losing the longer 3-year fellowship (and replacing with a 2-year one), particularly its impact on precariously-employed EMCRs. While we are highly supportive of the increased number of fellowships available, we would like to ensure that researchers who do not have ongoing employment are not disproportionately impacted.  

Recommendation 6: An opportunity exists to provide a three-month top up scheme for those who do not have ongoing employment following the scheme. This provides researchers in precarious employment the extended time to develop the Initiate project into a longer term project, and apply for future funding. This facilitates a full two-year focus for the researcher on the Initiate project, rather than having to rely on the research time within the fellowship to seek future funding (and thus diminishing their research capacity).

We would suggest that the wording on the Initiate grant be carefully reviewed. For instance, the phrase “Higher risk/Higher reward” implies a return on investment (ROI) and this style language could dissuade HASS researchers from applying, as outcomes/returns in HASS fields are often harder to convey in economic terms. The wording as it stands does not acknowledge that sometimes research does not lead to the outcome initially thought, that it might lead elsewhere, that the outcome might take some time to have its relevance discovered, or that the line of inquiry did not lead anywhere at all. To truly embrace blue-sky thinking and taking risks, the ARC needs to be comfortable with an array of outcomes and not expect that all investments will deliver ‘high rewards’.

Recommendation 7: SHAPE suggests that more explicit planning around interdisciplinarity and cross-sector research needs to be undertaken to reap the high quality outcomes sought by the ARC. What should be of central importance is adding knowledge to Australian society not just value to the economy.

Summary 

It is important that independent and interdisciplinary research in the HASS disciplines is protected and prioritised. Support should continue for theory-driven and investigator-initiated projects, not just industry-aligned or economically focused research. This involves supporting research emphasising knowledge generation and societal value—not only economic return (or ‘high rewards’) and recognising a broad spectrum of research outcomes, including long-term or non-linear impacts.

For the new model to effectively support SHAPE ECRs, post PhD pathways need to be strengthened including targeted training and widening grant eligibility so final stage PhDs and recent graduates without university employment are permitted to apply. 

Issues of equity must be considered. Greater support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars and research is a vitally important step but other issues remain. There is a need for gender quotas and fair ROPE weighting to ensure academics facing structural barriers are not disadvantaged. Clear quotas and protections for ECR and MCR applicants are needed to ensure fair competition and avoid bracket creep.

Supports beyond funding are vital to ensure the sustainability of EMCR research pathways. The mentoring program is a great move in this direction, but schemes also require structured training, clear progression pathways, opportunities for leadership, research-teaching balance, and other measures (ie. post grant top ups) to ensure EMCR research time is protected. 

We fully support the re-examination of the peer review system. The system can be improved by introducing repeat assessors, exploring reviewer remuneration, offering greater transparency in assessment criteria, and considering new and fair ways to assess interdisciplinary research proposals.