New grant delays hit Australian researchers

Uncertainty and delay are plaguing Australian research funding applicants, ostensibly because of legislation designed to put an end to such problems.

Applications for at least two key Australian Research Council (ARC) schemes – Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (Decra) and Future Fellowships – will be delayed for up to six months, according to a researcher who monitors ARC activities.

The researcher, who communicates under the X (formerly known as Twitter) handle “ARC Tracker”, said the delays were causing “a lot of stress” to Decra applicants. Eligibility for the programme, the main grant scheme for recent doctoral graduates, expires five years after a PhD is awarded.

ARC Tracker said Decra grants could make or break academic careers, and doctoral graduates typically built up their publication records for several years before applying. “Maybe they’ve already applied once and failed, and this is their last chance. Or maybe they’ve been waiting to come back to Australia after having a good postdoc elsewhere.”

Such people now feared the delay could render them ineligible, ARC Tracker said. “[That] has happened before. In the bad old days [when] delays or changes to schemes happened, people were just left out to dry.”

Time-frame blowouts and political meddling in ARC processes were commonplace under the former Liberal-National government. The Labor government vowed to fix such problems following its 2022 election.

An “ARC Scheme Calendar” published on the agency’s website introduced more certainty around time frames, while legislation passed in March curtailed ministerial power to interfere in grant decisions.

However, the calendar has not been updated in almost 18 months and time frames for several looming grant rounds have not been published. ARC Tracker said application due dates expected in late 2024 appeared to have been postponed until early to mid 2025.

The ARC would not confirm the delays or specify which schemes were affected. But a spokesman said that the new legislation, which comes into force in July, had necessitated changes to approval processes.

“The updated scheme calendar has been developed in line with these new legal requirements and will be published as soon as possible,” he said, but would not say when.

The spokesman said the ARC had “worked with stakeholders to optimise the timing of schemes, with the aim of easing the burden of peak periods for applicants, research administrators and peer reviewers”. The agency will “work to ensure” that timing changes “do not disadvantage applicants, including eligibility”, he added.

A university staffer familiar with the legislation said there was nothing to prevent the ARC from issuing funding rules and guidelines under the current legislation, and processing grant applications under the amended legislation.

The staffer said researchers should be given firm guarantees that their eligibility would not be derailed. “If applicants are caught innocently by bureaucratic matters to do with the transition, it would presumably be within the gift of the ARC board or the [education] minister to extend them one-off extensions.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com