The Australian Research Council has ruled that researchers are not eligible for critical career grants. This is due to a rule change described as extreme, punitive and unconformable with current scientific practices.
Many researchers are angry and devastated after being ruled out of Australian Research Council (ARC), fellowships. This is due to a new requirement that prohibits preprint material being cited in funding requests.
Guardian Australia spoke to six researchers from four universities in the fields of astronomy and computer science, but their applications were rejected because of technicalities.
For fear of losing their appeal chances, all spoke under the condition that they remain anonymous.
Before publication, research published in academic journals is subject to rigorous peer review. It is common for scientists working in certain fields to upload their work in preprint format to arXiv servers before publication.
ARC applicants were previously prohibited from publishing articles that have not been peer-reviewed in their publications by a well-established rule. The rule was changed for the 2021 round of Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards and mid-career Future Fellowships. It now allows any mention of preprints, even if they are used to refer to research by others. Researchers claim they weren't informed about the change.
Future Fellowships and DECRA provide critical salary funding to researchers in three-year blocks and four-year blocks. These are competitive fellowships that have a lower success rate than 20%.
The Twitter account ARC Tracker is an Australian researcher that has collected applications not subject to the new rule. According to the accounts administrator, they knew of at least 23 applicants who were deemed ineligible.
Many researchers in a sector already hit by funding cuts said that the removal of their applications could have a negative impact on their chances of securing a career in Australia.
Register to Receive the Top Stories from Guardian Australia Every Morning
One scientist who was offered a rare position in a permanent job by her university subject to her receiving a DECRA said that the disqualification severely restricted her funding options in Australia.
This was her second DECRA application, which is a limit for early-career researchers.
She said that I had spent four months preparing the application. It is okay to not be judged high enough, but it is so wasteful of time to not be judged.
She said that it was a very devastating career event. It means I have to start over and reevaluate my future.
I would love to live in Australia, but it seems like I may not be able to.
Another affected researcher said that unless something happens soon, I will have to start looking for other jobs in astronomy. I'm moving on.
Another said that Australia needs a strong scientific community. This is how they're funding it. We are all going to move on.
I am preparing to leave academia. I'm sick of it all.
Modern publication culture outlaws preprint rule
The ARC requests that researchers include information on national and international progress in their DECRA applications and research fields in their 41-page document.
One scientist stated that it was impossible to cite all the relevant research in her field without referring back to preprints. She said that it makes us plagiarise.
Another stated that I made a reference two preprints I didn't co-author. These two preprints are very prominent in the field. If I had not cited them, I would have been guilty academic misconduct.
Guardian Australia was told by an astrophysicist that he received positive comments from ARC assessmentors and his application was deemed uneligible to cite a piece software stored on the arXiv Server, even though it wasn't a preprint.
It was really frustrating that the effort you put into this was thrown out because of a technicality that is not applicable to my case.
Future Fellowship applicants who felt angry, demolished, and mistreated were also disqualified for citing technical documents on a server that typically hosts preprints.
He said that it is becoming increasingly difficult to conduct any research in this country.
President of the Australian Institute of Physics Prof Sven Rogge stated that the rule change had a significant impact on the physics community where preprints were used extensively.
The ARC rules do not align with modern publishing culture, according to my view. Rogge stated that young scientists who intended to give credit to others are punished by Rogge's narrow interpretation.
Preprints are necessary to disseminate research results while they are being peer reviewed in journals, which can often take many months.
Covid's science has shown the importance of preprints for essential scientific communication to public. This is especially true when studies that were not yet under peer review have been cited in press.
Affected astronomer stated: If your paper doesn't appear on the arXiv it is not read.
Some seminal works in certain fields, such as computer science and computer engineering, are only available on preprint servers. Journals do not have them.
Professor Daniel Angus from the Queensland University of Technology cited the VGG16 algorithm as an example on Twitter. The arXiv only has a paper about the algorithm, which is one of the most popular image classification systems in the globe and was used in current research funded by the ARC. It has been cited over 60,000 times.
Vidit Nanda is an associate professor of mathematics at Oxford. She described the Twitter rule as a ridiculous own-goal for Australian science in general, and especially brutal for mathematics.
Many funding agencies worldwide accept preprints in their applications, including the European Research Council (UK) and the National Institutes of Health (USA).
Australian Mathematical Society's president tweeted that he had requested a meeting at the ARC.
Guardian Australia asked the ARC why it had changed the preprint rule for the latest round of funding. However, the ARC said that the rule ensures that all applications will be treated equally.
It stated that this requirement was also communicated via webinars to research offices at the time the grant round opened. This new requirement is in effect since September 2020. It expands on the exclusion of preprints from a research output listing.
Guardian Australia spoke with affected researchers from all over the world who had preprint citations flagged to them by their university research office. These offices coordinate funding applications and search grants to ensure that they meet eligibility criteria.
The ARCs summary results showed that 25 Future Fellowship applications and 27 DECRA applications were deemed ineligible. The ARC could not confirm the number of these applications that were a result from the preprint rule.
It stated: Eligibility issues can arise in a variety of ways. For example, through ARC review of applications or through expert assessors who are experts in discipline, raising these issues for consideration by ARC.
Guardian Australia spoke with no researchers who had any eligibility issues. Expert assessors receive applications to make comments. Many received positive feedback.
Guardian Australia has been notified of some unsuccessful funding applications, but they were not deemed ineligible despite preprint citations. This suggests that the preprint rule could have affected high-ranking research proposals in high contention.
Mehreen Faruqi, a Greens senator, wrote Thursday night to Sue Thomas, chief executive of ARC, concerning the extremely unfortunate and distressing situation.
This apparent rule change and this approach have made many researchers ineligible to grant funds that they might have received.
These lengthy applications require hundreds of hours of research by researchers. Many careers depend on grant acceptance.
ARC should facilitate fair, transparent, and comprehensible applications.
One spokesperson from one of the affected universities stated that they would raise the issue with ARC. We feel sorry for the candidates who are affected by this issue, as we understand how hard it takes to create these proposals.
