30 Apr Policy Review of the ARC National Competitive Grants Program
The Australian Research Council (ARC) have released the Discussion Paper: A New Plan for ARC-Funded Research, which proposes significant reforms to the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program. This article outlines DARE’s response to this review (submitted to the ARC in April 2025), written by DARE Director Prof Willem Vervoort, with contributions from Dr Aaron Greenville, A/Prof Fiona Johnson, Prof Mark Jessell, Dr Mark Lindsay and Prof Lucy Marshall.
The proposed restructuring of the ARC National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP) aims to streamline the program and move from 15 to 6 programs. It also aims to give more opportunities for Indigenous research and Early Career Researchers (ECRs) and provide an opportunity for the government to target priority areas.
It is clear that some restructuring of the NCGP schemes was needed, as it favoured a risk-averse approach and was biased towards established researchers. However, it also provided some excellent elements, which should not be lost in the restructure.
The NCGP schemes are always going to be highly competitive as the total grants pool is small relative to the number of applicants, and the restructure is not going to solve this problem. If anything, it could increase the number of applicants in the proposed first “idea-only” round, leading to an overall reduction in success rate.
There are some positive aspects to the proposed restructure. The focus on ECRs, mentoring and Indigenous research are refreshing and provide new opportunities for under-represented researchers and could reduce the bias towards established researchers.
However, there are three areas of concern:
- The loss of an industry-focused program
- The loss of longer-term fellowships
- The short timeframe of some of the proposed programs.
Loss of an industry-focused program
As the current Director, Centre Investigators and beneficiaries of one of the programs that will be discontinued (an Industrial Transformation Training Centre), we are indeed disappointed to see a focus on industry-supported programs end. This is particularly concerning given the analysis in the concurrent Strategic Examination of Research and Development (R&D), which highlights the strong decrease in industry investment in R&D. The loss of the separate Linkage (industry linkage) stream is therefore particularly a concern, for a number of reasons.
The new program highlights the opportunity for industry partners to participate (but the cash investment level is not defined) in the Breakthrough program, presumably this is the equivalent of the current Linkage program. In the Collaborate program, the cash investment needs to match the ARC investment, which is quite a large hurdle for research fields that are not related to manufacturing, or for smaller industry partners.
For industries where the overall cash flow is lower, and many of the partners could be Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs) or state government agencies (such as in Data Science and Environment, where our ITTC is active), this will limit the size of the projects and therefore the opportunity to collaborate at scale. The large cash investment will also benefit more established and connected researchers, again limiting options for ECRs to work with industry. This is because ECR and MCRs will not have had the time to build trusted relationships with industry.
There are further risks related to the merging of the industry and discovery programs. The major benefit from having a separate industry stream is that there is no confusion for the reviewers. Industry projects are focused on direct outcomes for the partner organisation, while discovery projects are more blue-sky and risk-taking. While the new Initiate program covers the riskier discovery end, this separation is not clear in the Breakthrough and Collaborate programs. This caries a risk for both types of research – is the partner contribution and direct application a higher value than the theoretical breakthrough? Or is it valued the other way around? It is unclear how reviewers and panels will separate and value the projects.
The Linkage program has been key in developing research that can subsequently feed into other commercialisation programs and the loss of this specific stream will further reduce the opportunities for industry to step in at an early, riskier stage.
Removal of longer-term fellowships
The loss of longer-term fellowships is a concern in terms of attracting new talent to universities. In particular, the popular Future Fellowship program has been a significant opportunity to attract overseas talent, or to encourage overseas Australians to return. Shorter term project-based fellowships have a very different focus – they aim at retaining existing positions and focus purely on the project and less on building overall disciplinary strength. In some ways, this is a vegemite approach (spreading the available funding thinly) relative to a more focused approach, and this will preference existing strong research groups rather than opening opportunities for new approaches that provide a broader innovation spectrum. Similarly, current fellowships give ECRs the opportunity to demonstrate their research independence. If they are funded as part of a larger project, it will be harder for them to differentiate themselves from the senior academics and develop as strong research leaders by themselves.
Shorter timeframes
The Initiate stream and the Indigenous stream, in principle are great ideas to encourage a wider group of researchers to benefit from the NCGP funding. However, there is a risk in the short term and low(er) budgets of the schemes. Two years is very brief, particularly in field-based natural resources research, where climate variability such as 7-year El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycles can cause havoc in timelines. Is it envisioned that researchers apply for consecutive Initiate projects? Or is this not seen as “innovation” and are researchers required to find funding elsewhere if the jump to a Breakthrough project is too large?
There is again a high risk of losing talent, as two years offers very little security for a talented ECR. This increases the risk of a brain drain from universities, contradicting the purpose of the scheme to support ECRs. The budgets are also very modest if this needs to include the ECR’s salary. Or is it envisioned that this is contributed by the University? Or perhaps all these automatically have a fellowship embedded? This seems to contradict the statement that this scheme will: “Support universities in building research capacity by developing promising researchers and projects.”
Shorter term grants will also not encourage industry participation, as the issues examined in the companion Strategic Examination of R&D, the administrative burden of writing and submitting proposals, combined with reporting, are significant hurdles for many partners.
A final, smaller issue is that the Initiate stream, by lowering the barrier for applications, could get overwhelmed, as many more applications of the “idea-first” will be encouraged. This can potentially drown out the ECR applications that the scheme intends to encourage. This is specifically the case if the distance between the Initiate and Breakthrough scheme is too large.
Recommendations
Therefore, we would like to make the following recommendations:
- Maintain some sort of separation between projects supported by industry partners and those without. This does not need to be a separate stream but could simply be an indicator within the project to allow a consideration in the ranking.
- Consider lengthening the Initiate projects, even if this comes at the cost of reducing the number of grants available. The NCGP is always going to be super competitive, so the overall number of grants is less important than the opportunity to achieve real outcomes.
- Consider allowing more in-kind rather than cash contributions from SMEs and state government organisations to match the ARC investment in the Collaborate and Breakthrough programs.