ARC Funding Rules - perspectives on data management
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Transcript: English(auto-generated)
00:00
This is part of a series of webinars and other support events and materials provided by ANZ and this particular webinar is part of a little mini-series following up on the changes that have happened at the ARC recently. So last time we actually had people from the ARC presenting and talking about the changes themselves.
00:22
This time we've got people from the sector just to really exchange experience, what's happening and how people are reacting to these changes. We have with us today some special guests, Dr. Douglas Robertson.
00:40
Hello, Douglas. Hello, how are you? Yeah, Douglas is the Director of Research Services at the Australian National University. We also have Joe Thurman who is the Member Services Manager at Intersect. Joe, are you with us? Hello, hello. Oh, yes, I am now. I was muted. Thanks for joining us, Joe. Are you in Sydney today?
01:02
Actually on the Gold Coast, the Southern Cross duty Gold Coast campus. Ah, okay. So Joe is here to talk from the perspective of Intersect which is a new research provider in the New South Wales area but obviously has tentacles all over Australia. We also have Justin Withers with us.
01:22
He won't be presenting anything particular today but is the ARC branch manager or acting for the strategy branch and he's happy to take any questions that come up about particular technical questions to do with the ARC changes. Thanks, Adrian. Justin is here.
01:41
Good. So we also have Greg Lachlan here today from ANZ, the Principal Policy Advisor with ANZ and we'll probably get a little overview of when, Greg, as to how things have changed. We'll start with that. We'll go to some discussion with Joe and Douglas and then we'll move to your questions from the audience.
02:03
So Greg, we've come to assume that everyone was here with us last week when we really went into detail about the changes so perhaps we could have a little overview of what's changed and what are the issues that are bringing us together. Okay, Adrian, we will. We will do that. We heard in some detail from the ARC last week and therefore today is more the application
02:25
side so I'll be fairly brief but just to make sure we all know what has changed. The two things that have changed are the funding rules and the application templates and they are not for everything. At this present time they're for discovery grants and soon linkage grants starting in
02:42
2015. So let's look at the funding rules and I said this will be brief and it will. Here are the funding rules. There's the reference down the bottom, page 18. It's a quote. The ARC strongly encourages the depositing of data arising from a project, that would be a funded project, in an appropriate publicly accessible subject and or institutional
03:03
repository. So that is a new rule. Now let's look to the application form. This comes from three sources but it's all ARC. Applicants are now required to outline their plans for the management of data from the proposed because it's application stage so proposed research including but not limited
03:25
to storage, access and reuse arrangements. They are the ARC words. We've got outline stroke plan here because the outline is just an outline of the plan. It could improve the competitiveness of your application by contributing to some of
03:40
the key criteria which ARC judge applications. There of course are wider benefits as well but when asked about, you know, would a good outline lead to a better result and the answer is it could, depending on disciplinary practices. This is from the FAQs. The answers should focus on plans or your plans to make the data as openly accessible
04:02
as possible for the purposes of the verification and for the future conduct of research by others. So these are important signals. Now you do have to complete the data management section in the application form. It's presumably short, half a page or so. The publication of your data is not mandatory.
04:23
It's sort of strongly recommended and the ARC recognises that there are differences in practice and principles between disciplines, institutions and individuals. Now that bottom small text to my words, that means or that implies that the effectiveness of your outline or plan is guided or will be guided by disciplinary
04:43
norms and practices. I think that is a summary of the changes. Yeah, that's right. So just to flag there in response to that, there's lots of people all over Australia doing all sorts of things in response to these changes. Here at ANDS, we've produced a two-page guide.
05:00
It's meant really to help us support the support staff at universities. It's not really necessarily meant for individual researchers. It's to put stuff in the hands of the research office or library or your research or whoever is assisting research staff at the different universities. And so we just say that's a new resource.
05:20
I'm just shamelessly taking advantage of the opportunity to plug something new there. And we will follow this up with more detailed resources and support and partnerships with each of the universities for the successful applicants or for the projects that even without funding are still going to go ahead in some modified form. And that's where you get down to not just an outline of a plan but really,
05:44
okay, what is the plan and how do we do that? More on the support from ANDS a little bit later. Let's get down to the subject matter today. So there are the changes. Doug, let's start with you. So what's happening at the ANU in response to these particular changes? Well, I think it's important to recognize that the ARC action is just part of a
06:01
growing movement that's been happening globally. So the ARC, thankfully, has taken a very sensible approach to this, which is to go with that tide of change and not to impose a mandatory set of requirements before we truly understand the implications of data management, data curation and data access.
06:21
As the ARC has said, there's massive differences between disciplines. One of the things we're doing at ANU and we were doing this prior to the ARC changes is to have a series of workshops and to exchange best practice between different individuals within the institution. It's important to recognize, I think, that as far as the research community is
06:42
concerned, you know, this may be new for research offices, but it's not new for a lot of researchers. A lot of researchers already commit to open access repository in astrophysics or astronomy in the digital humanities. So there's a lot of effective stuff already happening.
07:02
For those researchers that are already active, filling in the section in the ARC is not an issue. And the last thing you want is to impose some kind of institutional norm on it, which doesn't take account of these disciplinary differences. But for those that maybe are kind of not being exposed to the issues around
07:21
open data management and data curation, then it's a matter of just engaging in conversation with them and the ANS guide, you know, and all those kind of things just help to help people be more aware. So I think it's, you know, it's a kind of work in progress, if you like. And we're just contributing to that by trying to open up the debate.
07:40
I am really keen to make sure this isn't seen in the research community as the research office seeking to command and control the research ship and how it develops. But it is important that we provide effective support to researchers so that those that are struggling have access to either support from the research office,
08:02
but probably more appropriate support from researchers in their own discipline that can actually provide them with guidance that's much more contextual than which research offices could ever recognise. I mean, we're dealing with datasets that go from, in terms of data commons at ANU, which is some of our kind of data archiving.
08:22
You're going from things of kind of bilingual texts around Byzantine documents to weather data to space and astronomy data. It is a huge panoply of research data and they all have different requirements. And they also have different needs to share and to share when.
08:41
I think one of the big debates I'm kind of suppose having with myself in some senses is trying to figure out how you take account of when data should be shared, as opposed to just the mantra that sharing data is good. I think most researchers would agree that science is meant to be an open enterprise and therefore sharing data is good.
09:01
But we do have to recognise that in the context of academic promotions, publications are still the primary mechanism. And therefore, if you share your data before you've published, then actually other researchers can, without having sweated anything into the creation of the dataset, they can gain the publication benefit from it.
09:21
And for that reason, I think data citation is also going to be increasingly important in the future in order to make sure that these things are put. So Joe, what about at Intersect? What's the mood there? Or what are the Intersect staff doing in response to this? So I guess I'd start by echoing what's already been seen before. It's very much a case that we're trying to support researchers in helping them secure and share their data.
09:44
A lot of researchers see a great deal of value in that. And those that don't, I guess, will either eventually see value or won't, but you can't make people do things. If it's okay, I'll start by saying, hey, thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to speak and briefly explain what Intersect is for those who don't have that context.
10:03
So we're a not-profit company. We were founded in 2008. We're now a consortium of 11 universities and four affiliate members. And the company mission is to deliver research impact through e-research. So that's why the members pay their subscription fees. We're big enough now to provide a whole bunch of services to our members
10:21
to help them achieve that goal. And I'm only going to talk about the ones that are relevant to assisting our members with responding to these data management changes in the funding rules. But before I do that, I'd just like to make a couple of quick observations. One is that we operate in a really interesting environment where we're trying to help 11 different universities respond to these changes.
10:42
And each of those universities is in a really different place internally. Some of our member universities, when these changes came through, more or less said, yeah, no, we've got that under control. We've got very well advanced data management policies we can help Intersect. We don't need much help from you for these changes. We just need you as an infrastructure partner. The others, Intersect's heavily involved with the research office and library and IT.
11:03
The next observation I wanted to make is that responding to these changes, we're going to do very little to help researchers directly that we don't already do. And most of our work happens in really close partnership with the research support structures inside the university. And there I'm thinking mostly about the library and IT services in the research office. But each of our members has at least one novel take
11:23
on the best way to support research through technology. The other observation I wanted to make was that research data requirements really sit on a spectrum from very simple to either not very much data or a reasonable amount of data that's all quite homogeneous, right through to extremely complex data. So either that it's very, very large or that it's wildly heterogeneous
11:44
or that it needs to be near large computing facilities. So the governing principle that we work with our members on is that the most valuable thing that we can do is to assist in situations where either the institution or the researcher has a mismatch between what they can do for themselves and the complexity of the research data management issues they face.
12:03
And that's the governing principle for all of the work that we do. So there's a cohort of researchers who we help and they've been the ones who up to now have been the ones we've helped the most and they sit right at the complex end of the spectrum. And so for those researchers they will have, and this has already been said, they'll have very little adjustment to make to meet these new funding rules.
12:24
But for them we act as a development partner so we build software systems for them. We act as an infrastructure partner so we'll store their hundreds of terabytes of data. Or we'll provide aspects of e-research advice for their grant proposals. But it's very much working one-on-one with a research group
12:40
who already have a lot of capability or at the very least understand that they've got a really difficult problem to solve and working with them individually. And to put some figures against that, in the last quarter we've helped about 40 grant applications go through the pipeline through Centers of Research Excellence, IIT Discovery, LEAP, and various state proposals. And that work all happened in close collaboration with the research office and our members.
13:03
To give two concrete examples, the top one is the Australian Schizophrenia Research Bank, which is a software project that we've been working on over the last four or five years with the Australian Schizophrenia Research Institute. And below is some work that we're currently doing with some big data,
13:23
some big data work that's happening through the Lowy Institute in New South Wales. So that's the context. And so what are we doing now? So what we're doing at the moment is trying to help members respond systematically to these AIC funding rule changes. And at most institutions what we're doing is trying to provide that baseline support
13:42
for all those researchers who operate at that simple end of the research data spectrum, the ones who don't have a lot of data or that the data is relatively straightforward. Because the data being simple doesn't mean that the data is not valuable. The data is still very valuable. And it's a very large cohort of researchers and we're doing two things to help institutions.
14:01
The first is that we need to help researchers understand, when we meet researchers, we need to help them understand that there's a very basic layer of support that's offered by the institution. And that layer of support actually provides the mechanisms of a basic research data management plan. And then they can put an outline of that into their research data application.
14:21
We're making sure that researchers understand that they need to provide a safe home for their data and tend to it in an orderly manner. We need them to understand that there are places that they can register their data and they should say that they will. And that they can and they should make their data available to share, at least when they finish their project. So the back half of that is to provide the institution
14:42
with a set of processes and infrastructure so that the researchers can make good on that commitment. So researchers, we're encouraging them to make commitment to the ARC when they put in their grant application. And so we're also working closely with the universities and also closely with the ANDS on the ground staff in New South Wales to help universities answer questions like,
15:03
can our IT infrastructure actually support the simple research hosting phase? Or do we need an infrastructure partner? And then working closely with the library and research office and IT services to work out who is going to provide the assistance for the researcher to make good on these commitments that they're making. And finally and possibly most importantly, how do our researchers self-assess whether they have a simple or complex data requirement?
15:23
And I'm really delighted to see the ANDS guidelines come out today, so we'll be making full use of those. I'd like to spend one more minute to talk about what's happening in the future. And this is some activity that we've just got underway and it's again in close collaboration with ANDS, is that research endeavors involved and the complexity of the data management challenges that people face get larger.
15:44
And so we need a program of work to help researchers who are facing increased complexity move along this spectrum to become data aware researchers. So we're putting into place a bunch of training material that helps researchers with moderate data problems put together their own research data management plans.
16:02
So we've got a really well established learning and development program. Last year we trained about 500 researchers in all sorts of research techniques and we'll be rolling that out over the next short time with our members. Two things I'd like to say, and this in some sense is a bit of a call to arms, so all of Intersex training material is made available under Creative Commons Licensing. And secondly, for our friends interstate,
16:23
we're really happy, in fact really keen, to work together to put together material to make it of a high quality, so that this is an area where we can get significant economies out of sharing. It's a great idea, Joe, and we're very happy to help to see that cross-pollination across the sector.
16:42
Terrific. And so this is more of a summary, which I think I've had just about enough time. I would like to show one more slide, which I think is my favorite slide at the moment, and this one. This is a graph of retractions. So the black line is how many papers get published, and the blue and the red lines are how many papers get retracted.
17:01
They're on different scales, so don't worry that they intersect. But somewhere around 1995 something happened and the number of retractions has skyrocketed since. And I like to think that part of what's happened is that there's a lot more collaborating around data and there's a lot more people checking other people's work. And this is a symptom in the large of science working properly.
17:23
And I think that as data is shared more widely, this trend will increase. And this is part of the reason I think while the ARC is absolutely right to be strongly encouraging the positing of data. And our challenge, I think, is to make it as easy as possible for researchers to do that, but also to help them see value in doing it as well.
17:43
And that's more or less what our program of work is meant to achieve. Thanks, Joe. It's an important point that a lot of this is not necessarily only about reuse of data, but it's about the integrity of science and the openness of the scientific method in that sense across all disciplines
18:01
and being able to show that the conclusions you came to were based on something and to be able to share that. I mean, there's an excellent report called Science as an Open Enterprise produced by the Royal Society in London. And it seemed, and it kind of follows the trajectory of this slide from Joe,
18:20
that we had to remind ourselves that science was meant to be an open enterprise and with the pressure to kind of compete almost at one stage, probably a few years ago, getting rather too intense, we're now in a phase of much stronger collaboration, which I think is just, you know, we have to remember the fundamentals
18:41
of good science is your data should be reproducible and it should be open to challenge. And therefore, all of these moves are just reminding us of what founded science many centuries ago and the principles that founded science was sharing your work and having critique of your work.
19:02
And in order to critique your work, it's not critiquing the publication, it's critiquing the whole package. I think this is, you know, this is why it's a kind of, it seems to be a no-brainer that people should support these moves, but we do have to make sure that we do them sensitively and appropriately.
19:21
There's a very great generalization. How are the applicants reacting to the new requirements? I think as you'd expect, a range of human beings with a range of traits from, and it reflects their data savviness to some extent, some it's no problem whatsoever. To others, they're kind of saying, well, I've always done this
19:43
and my publications have always been well-regarded. Why do we have to do this? And to some extent, they're not wrong because some of the publications are sufficiently clear that you don't actually need access to primary data. And it's more of a reuse that you need access to primary data rather than for validation.
20:02
I am concerned that there's an increasing number of publications, particularly in the life sciences, from what one reads in Nature and elsewhere, that the publication is not sufficiently complete to know that it's reproducible. And in a couple of recent Nature papers, the one Nature paper, they could only reproduce 11% of advanced cancer studies.
20:23
In another study by, I think it was AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company, they could only replicate from publications 8 out of 56 advances in biosciences. And that, to some extent, is this kind of competitive edge where people maybe don't want to disclose absolutely everything
20:41
until they've kind of milked it to get maximum profile. Thankfully, that's a rare phenomenon, I think. But nonetheless, it's a phenomenon we have to be aware of, and we have to make sure that science is as beyond reproach as possible. And in the system that we're talking about here, the application data management, the good thing, the good design in this
21:04
is that it is very sensitive to the different discipline requirements. And it's the peers from a particular panel that are applying the norms of that particular area. I always get concerned when it's as a consequence of a new funding rule or a new regulation that we assume this is the first time
21:21
the sector has paid attention to something, which is not the case. There are many, many researchers that have already got, they're very data savvy, and therefore we shouldn't think that just because the ARC has introduced a funding rule that this is novel, this is new. What is new is the requirement to answer a question in the application, which is healthy.
21:41
And Joe, do you have a feeling for the temperature of things with the applicants? What's the feedback there? Absolutely. I think there's probably three cohorts that are kind of a bit different. So there's one set who will happily comply. They don't necessarily see a huge amount of value in it for them, but they're happy to do it. And for them it's about, I'm already pretty busy.
22:03
Can you give me as much help as you can, both in terms of writing the grant and then complying later on? I think there's a range of cohorts who just have no interest. But there's some, I think, right at the other end of the spectrum who see this as a strategic area. And again, this is not new for them. A strategic area where they can compete internationally.
22:21
So being known as a source of data or a discipline is something that people are interested in. And something that RDSI got really right in their initial rhetoric about saying this is the place where you put collections that are significant. I know that's not the wording they use anymore. But some researchers really latched onto that and said,
22:41
well, I can actually use the fact that this is in Australia's national repository of significant research data as a lever in my negotiations with potential collaborators. Some people have really engaged with it, not just as a greater good idea, but also as an idea of strategic importance for their research. So you really do cover the full gamut.
23:02
The place where they get the strongest reaction is where there's a mismatch between how valuable they see it for themselves and how much effort that they've got to expend. I think one of the other interesting phenomenons that we're recognising is engagement with participants in research. And so the data part of this is what's produced.
23:23
But we're seeing an increasing number of studies that are consulting about the research they intend to undertake on the participants that they may actually be studying as part of the project. And that brings in this issue of public sharing of data. So there's making data publicly available, but it's also making it accessible to those that are non-specialists.
23:45
How much stuff do you have to put around the data to make it truly available to the public as opposed to publicly available, which are two very different... I think we're really at very early days in trying to understand that,
24:01
except in a few disciplines which have already... And that schizophrenia example is an excellent version of working probably with a community of researchers. But also with a community of other professionals. Absolutely. What about your own staff, the research office and the support staff? How do they feel about this? I think the challenge for research offices
24:22
is that as pressures on budgets fight, but demands for more support increases, it does mean that research offices can be under considerable pressure. I think the important thing from a research office perspective is to recognise that this isn't their problem.
24:41
It's a research community issue. And certainly at ANU, we collaborate extensively with the library. And that collaboration is very, very healthy. They've been working in data and archiving data far more than research offices have. And therefore it's important that the research office
25:01
is not seen as the single point of knowledge. But in terms of the staff, I think what we need to do is we need to increase the training and the visibility for those staff. And I'm pretty sure this will probably be on the arms conference agenda when the conference is in Canberra in September.
25:20
But we do need to make research offices more aware, but they've got lots of other things that they're having to be more and more aware of these days as the world gets increasingly complex. So it's a pretty high pressure place to be. And you can come across some researchers that are quite emotional in this space, both in favour and against.
25:40
And that can put pressure on trying to introduce them to the needs of the ARC, but also get them to try and take account of the changes that are happening in the global research community. And certainly we wish ANU to be and to continue to be at the cutting edge of that community and not to be one of a leading pack
26:01
as opposed to a foreign pack. Joe, is that different for any research support provider? Is that a different kind of challenge for the staff there? I think it is because we're one more step removed. The key challenge for us is understanding what the institution's response is
26:22
and helping in the most appropriate way. It's always tempting to try to fight for an organisation like Intersect, it's always tempting to try to find a one-size-fits-all solution. And that just doesn't work. So we're in constant dialogue with our member unions, especially the research office at the moment, trying to work out the place where we fit in.
26:40
In some sense it's the unenviable task of trying to make ourselves obsolete every time we go and help someone by raising the internal capabilities of groups to do this sort of stuff. I think the issue for many research offices is they become trapped into a world of being compliance monitors, which is not an appropriate way to structure.
27:01
Compliance is a necessary evil. You do have to have compliance, you do have to fit all the rules that exist. I do get concerned that sometimes there are rather too many rules and we're making the world a bit too complicated, but we have to play the game by the rules that are set. But it is about recognising the research office as part of a support infrastructure.
27:20
One aspect of which is compliance, but the danger with compliance is you lead to a kind of lowest threshold of performance. So do you comply? Yes. And that means it's ticked so you don't do any more. But in the world of research data, there are much bigger issues than mere compliance. The ARC is following the global trend
27:42
and for Australia we need to make sure that Australia is really committing to open access and open data as part of science as an open enterprise. And research offices are only a small part of that equation. They're not the single point of all solutions. So just before we go off to the questions from the audience,
28:01
just one other reflection. We've been focusing a little bit on the research management. So the management of data section, the new requirement to have an outline of a plan and the repercussions of that. There are some more fundamental changes that Greg referred to at the beginning around just an overall reminder from the ARC
28:21
that you have responsibilities according to the code and that you are strongly encouraged wherever appropriate to deposit in a publicly accessible repository. How do you see those longer term changes affecting the role of a research office? Douglas is that you will be required if research data is one of the reportable outputs.
28:43
What repercussions does that have for a research office where data could be anywhere in the world in one sense, not just neatly stored in journal publication? Honest answers, I don't really know. I do get concerned when I hear about pressure on institutional repositories because my view is it doesn't matter where stuff is
29:03
as long as it's in a good place with good infrastructure and it's accessible. So I'm glad to see the ARC have the requirement to be either in an institutional repository or in a discipline or other publicly accessible repository because there's a lot of really excellent stuff
29:21
happening within disciplines and we need to make sure that this isn't about institutional control of a single repository thinking of it as something physical. I am concerned about the potential build up through time not so much on pressure on the research office but pressure on supporting the research infrastructure and therefore we need to be quite agile in our solutions
29:42
making best use of repositories that exist elsewhere and having good metadata accessible through an institutional source but not necessarily actually thinking that everything has to be brigaded into a single piece of institutional infrastructure. As I understand it, in many branches of physics
30:00
there are major data archives that already have existed for years and they don't exist necessarily within Australia. They can be on the East Sea Coast of the USA and it's really important that we make best use of the global infrastructure and we don't create an unnecessary infrastructure burden on Australian institutions
30:21
without making full use of that which is available internationally. The pressure on research budgets is intense. The cost of research will continue to rise ahead of the normal rate of inflation and the cost of providing infrastructure will continue to rise and it's not so much that the cost in this space need necessarily be large
30:40
but it's when you add them to all the other costs with an efficiency gain in the sector there are real pressure points in funding that we all have to be aware of, including the ARC. And Joe, from a research provider point of view the longer term shift there to depositing data after a project
31:00
how do you see that playing out from an intersect point of view? I don't think I can add to what's already been said I think that's bang on the money. I think that the most value for research data is where researchers can find it and fragmenting stuff across institutional repositories I think can make sense in some certain cases but fundamentally researchers are driven by community and collaboration
31:21
and I think the natural order of things will be for discipline specific repositories that people understand how to get to. The other aspect of it I think is data citation. I'm not sure how much research data will actually get searched for that's not cited. I think the fundamental cognitive mindset of how researchers find interesting other research
31:42
is through the literature and so I think that's a really important part of whatever happens but really I'm just finessing the edges of what's already been said. Thanks Joe. Before we go off to the questions Justin, was there anything that came in that conversation that you'd like to comment on or clarify or anything, any thoughts that that provoked?
32:00
I'd just like to say it's very encouraging to see the level of acceptance and interest across the sector. It's fantastic to see I guess the preparedness or hear of the preparedness generally speaking out there and the discussion at the moment is reflective of the fact that there is a flexibility and approach across disciplines in a way in which data is managed and considered
32:21
and that's why we haven't made it a mandate. Basically we're leaving that up to the experts in the disciplines out there to decide best practice and how to store, disseminate and make accessible the data that's generated from their research projects. So all in all I think it's moving very well in the right direction.
32:40
Thanks Justin. Alright, so we did have a couple of questions here. The question is, is the ARC going to fund existing repositories or the building of new repositories to cater for the increased demand generated by this policy change? Perhaps that's a good question for Justin. There's no intention at the moment to provide additional funds
33:04
under any of our projects for the development of specific infrastructure. That being said, if there is an advantageous reason to seek funding for that basis we would I guess consider it as part as a normal leaf round.
33:21
Yeah and certainly the larger infrastructure question requires some kind of coordination. If this is the growing expectation, and we talked about that last time we were here, that this is a social trend that's just washing over all of research. If that is the trend then obviously not all of that can be taken, not all the infrastructure requirements in there
33:42
can be taken up by the ARC. Now there probably are some opportunities within the ARC but obviously it needs to be taken into account for the whole sort of planning of research infrastructure, that ARC is one part of the infrastructure funding but there are important parts for example of NCRIS that some of this infrastructure needs to be
34:02
at least brought to bear on this problem and I think it comes back to your point before Douglas about finding the infrastructure that's appropriate and that's easy and that's natural for researchers to use and using that in the most efficient way. My understanding is that if you have substantial costs
34:20
that fall within the project that are required and can be justified in line with normal ARC requirements you can build those costs into the proposal but of course in the vast majority of projects the substantial costs fall outside the project period and I do think for the good of Australia we need a really sensible debate about research infrastructure of which this is a part.
34:43
The other point that I would make is I think there's a real huge increase in the volume of research data. In the number of research meetings I've been in recently in a whole variety of disciplines I kind of almost hate the words but big data comes up every time,
35:02
the challenges of big data, how are we going to integrate different data sets in order to have more probing research questions and I think we're really just at the start of the discussion around data and data infrastructure but it's important for Australia that we can hold our head up in world science
35:21
and I use science in the German sense of the word meaning all disciplines that we can hold our head up internationally and I am concerned about the research infrastructure questions. And the only other coordinating point I think that over the last year or so the Chief Scientist has been interested in that coordination of the requirements of science and infrastructure and there are quite a few reports out there
35:43
in the National Research Investment Plan so there were mentions there of what infrastructure is required for these kind of open data policies. And Joe mentioned open source and I think it's fundamental that as much of these developments and different institutions within Australia
36:01
is open source in order that we can all stand on each other's shoulders and therefore stand out internationally as best in class rather than seeing it as a game to be one up on somebody in this particular area of infrastructure I think it's much more important to act as a collective
36:20
than it is to act as an individual institution. Alright there's another question here not so much a question but a comment on timeframes. Our research office runs internal EOI processes for pre-filtering ARC applications. I'd be interested in knowing how common this is at other places.
36:41
So what this has meant in practice is that our internal deadlines of these have now already passed for discovery and are coming up soon, tomorrow for Discovery Early Career Research Awards and DECRA. Information provided by ARC, e.g. the FAQs and by ANDS including these webinars unfortunately came a bit late for us
37:02
to provide effective support in this time round but we have done our best. Is it the intention to provide this kind of information a bit earlier next year? So look from our point of view this is now a part of the furniture and we're providing this kind of support from now on this is just a line in the sand
37:21
and these funding schemes become due at different times of the year and we should be ready now I think from now on to provide that support when it's actually required. Everything is cumulative you have to start at some point and the good news is we've started and I think from an ARC perspective
37:42
it's not so much this set of deadlines which will really say how much has been kind of advanced it's how that changes over the next two, three, four years and how the data management section becomes more refined and more relevant as more sharing of the benefits done.
38:02
I would counsel Justin to ask the ARC to make sure that they are open and sharing in the views of the assessors even though it's not a formal part of the assessment I would want them to make some general observations from different funding rounds on what the assessors found with regard to data management plans
38:22
were there any developments that looked really exciting and interesting that people should be aware of because the ARC is in a very privileged position in receiving the best researchers across Australia submitting proposals to them and therefore they have an integrating role to make best use of the knowledge in front of them and that's just not on proposals that are funded
38:42
but maybe proposals that have exceptionally good sections in data management and seeking ways to share those so again it commits to this open source environment where we're sharing best practice. Yes, and we're establishing in one sense the kind of precedents and standards that will be developed through those decisions there.
39:01
It's not about the individual project and individual proposal it's about the research system as a whole. We're committed to the open data and we will be actually looking and monitoring its effects on our applications if and when they do come in and if we do need to provide further advice and examples we will definitely be looking at the opportunity to do that.
39:21
Yes, and I think one of your mechanisms is through the ARC Open Data I can't remember there being a substantive section on open data and open access and I think it would merit animation through that set of mechanisms as well as others. Yes, we're continually trying to liaise with the sector as much as possible
39:41
on these new initiatives. We actually disclosed the survey with COLE the Council of Australian University Librarians primarily on open access but there was a couple of questions in that survey regarding data preparedness and archiving and the like so there will be some information that's useful that comes out of that as well. Yes, and ARC's approach is welcomed I think
40:02
certainly by me in terms of the way you're approaching this generally. Ok, last question here. A question for Joe Thurman. What do you think happened in 2008-2010 which resulted in far fewer papers being retracted? Oh, that's a great question. There was a rise from 1996
40:22
but then a fall from 2010. The average period between a paper being published and retracted is four and a half years. So that fall is just we haven't found them yet. What a shame. But that's a terrific question. When I say we, it's not actually my job to find them.
40:42
That's right. Your job to show the slides. Anything else? All that? Or any other comments there? Good. So I just remind you of the support around this. We have basically a set of resources and you'll see those on the screen now
41:00
for the data management and funder requirements. The guide that we talked about earlier is on the second URL that's on the screen now, the data management slash funding and you'll find our particular guide there because it's particularly to do with one of the funder's requirements. We're running again these kind of events
41:21
and webinars and are very happy to hear your ideas. If you want to have a discussion about X please contact us or if you think it would be great to hear from Y please tell us. We're very keen that the subject matter of these webinars should be really decided on by the community. And then the third leg of the support is the consultancies
41:41
both on these short-term requirements during the funding submission season and longer-term, you know, how can a university really undertake its responsibilities under the code of responsible conductive research and quite happy to have these long-term partnerships with universities to really bed down
42:02
all the different policy and practice and culture change and infrastructure that might be required around the longer-term change here and within mind to be able to build up the profile and collaboration and return on investment that comes with research data. I think that's all. So we do have a couple of upcoming webinars.
42:22
We've got, you can see them on the screen there you go to the site there. You'll find out what's coming up soon. There's a webinar coming up towards the end of this month with Max Wilson from University College London and that's broadly around institutional support for data management. So that sounds like a really interesting one
42:41
that's coming up fairly soon. I think that was all. Thank you very much, Douglas. Pleasure. It's been really great to have you here and get that sort of inside of you. If people wanted to contact you further about the kinds of things there, how would they through the ANU? That was dotromerson.anu.edu.au Happy to receive any emails, positive or negative.
43:02
Good. That's good. And Joe, thank you very much. It was a very refreshing sort of insight into how a state-based e-research support provider is active in this area. So thank you very much for that. If people have questions or want to take up offers of intersex services, how would they contact you, Joe?
43:20
They can either contact me at joe.ferbon at intersex.org.au or if they're in New South Wales, just make contact with their local e-research analyst. Okay, terrific. And Justin, thank you very much again for sitting in and clarifying any of those points there from the ARC's perspective. To get the ARC perspective, Justin, is there a particular website
43:42
or somewhere you'd guide people towards? Basically go to the frequently asked questions on our discovery projects at this stage. We'll provide some information on our expectations. If there's any specific questions, you can always email info at arc.gov.au. Excellent.
44:00
But I'd just like to say how encouraging it is to see the interest and the positive interest in the sector with the introduction of this requirement. Yes, it is very good. We can see the number of people that are contacting urns and these webinars, et cetera. So it's certainly of interest and not a kind of negative interest. It's an interest, you know, here's a good challenge
44:21
and how do we address this new challenge and opportunity? Thank you very much. Thank you, Greg, as always. Excellent background and some great insights. And thanks to the audience, terrific input. And we'll see you at our next virtual event. Thanks for that. Bye-bye.
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