The Australian Research Council review of the National Competitive Grants Programme invites responses on six themes, most of which can be concisely addressed with calls for more money.
But the Australian Academy of Science submission goes way further, specifying where money should go and calling on the ARC to person-up and protect the researchers who should be its core constituents.
On funding, the Academy argues basic research “must” be the NCGP’s focus. “Only government can provide the ‘patient’ capital needed to conduct the basic research and risk-taking that underpins discovery and often unexpected applications.”
To ensure this the council need to abandon research translation, which “confuses the purpose of the ARC and NCGP to support basic and applied research not (sic) translation and commercialisation.”
However, the Academy appears to get that governments want something for their money, beyond the thanks of curious researchers, who may, or may not, discover something the taxpaying plebs can understand. And so it suggests using the Linkage Programme (now too much industry collaboration) to fund missions, “challenges that are complex, require effort at scale and system-level solutions, and engagement with stakeholders, including society.” Missions, the Academy proposes, could be based on national interests, expressed for example, in the Science and Research Priorities, or international objectives or the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. But whatever they are the ARC should decide.
Then there is the Academy’s assessment of where the ARC is; “recent trends that have seen the ARC responding reactively to external national security or political agendas or allowing itself to be subordinate to the Department of Education must be reversed. The CEO and Board answer to the Minister—and no one else.”
And where it should be, “Research funders have responsibilities that go beyond being accountants or contract managers. The ARC has a unique role—as reflected in the Act’s objects—in shaping the science system and asserting its values in the public arena and to government.”
Easy-peasy.
The ARC is not publishing submissions to the present review. In this case not hard to see why.
