NCM logo National Committee for Mathematics 
ARC Panel Procedures in Mathematics and Physics

Return to the ARC Research Fellowships Scheme page.
Return to the ARC Large Grants Scheme page.

The Panels of the ARC Research Grants Committee and the Research Training and Careers Committee have two principal meetings annually to consider applications for research grants and fellowships. The first is in April and the second in August. Panel Chairs also meet in July. The principal aims of the April meeting are to cull ineligible and uncompetitive applications and to assign assessors for the remainder. The July meeting is to review the assessments, their number and quality. The aims of the August meeting are to consider assessor's reports, designate successful applications and decide the level of funding for the grants. A more detailed outline of the annual schedule is given on the Panel program page. Here we describe in more detail the procedures of the principal meetings.

April meeting

Preliminaries

Prior to the meeting Panel Chairs designate two readers for each application, grant or fellowship.

  • Readers are chosen by area of expertise rather than panel affiliation.
  • Care is taken to avoid conflicts of interest (CoI). No panel member may act as reader for an application from their own institution or from anyone with whom they have any kind of association.
  • Panel members applications are dealt with by a separate independent panel.
Readers are expected at this stage to consider applications in sufficient detail to make critical assessments on quality and eligibility.

Meeting

The objectives of the first meeting are:

  • to identify ineligible applications;
  • to exclude uncompetitive applications; and
  • to choose appropriate assessors for the remaining applications.
Eligibility is measured against the guidelines and competitiveness, at this stage, judged on the strength of evidence provided by the applicants. The Research Grants panel is directed by the ARC to cull 30% of applications and the Fellowships panel is directed to cull 50%. Fellowship applications are rated by a designated formula:
  1. the quality of the applicant, (50%)
  2. the quality of the project, (25%) and
  3. the quality of the research environment and commitment of the host institution.(25%)

Designation of assessors.

Assessors are designated by the panels based on

  • nominations by the applicant,
  • the panel members' own knowledge, or,
  • consultation with the ARC Grants Application Management Scheme (GAMS).
GAMS is an electronic database used to facilitate all features of the grant process. It lists over 20,000 possible assessors and is accessible to all panel members throughout the assessment cycle. In particular it contains over 1,200 entries for mathematical scientists.

Large Grant and Senior Research Fellowships applications are assigned seven assessors and Research Fellowship (APD, ARF, QEII) applications five. In all cases one applicant is chosen from the applicants' nominees.

Commentary

The major difficulty with the grant and fellowship programs is inadequate funding in relation to the number of high quality applications. Competitiveness has to be judged against available funds and current budgeting precludes funding of more than 20% of grant applications and 12% of fellowships. (A success rate of 30-35% is generally considered to be an acceptable target for competitive grant schemes.)

A second difficulty is the size of the operation. The total number of applications to the physical sciences panel for grants and fellowships in 1998 was approximately 370. Hence each panel member has to read around 100 applications and the total number of independent assessors to be assigned is of the order of 1500. (The number of applications declined by approximately 25% in 1998. The reasons for this decline are not clear but it could be a reflection of the discouragement felt by previously unsuccessful applicants.) The administrative work involved with such large numbers is especially onerous. Mailing of requests for assessors' reports is completed in the first half of May and replies are sought for mid-June.

July meeting

The subpanel chairs meet at the beginning of July to review the quality of the assessors' reports. The aims of this review are to

  • identify problems such as breach of confidentiality,
  • contact assessors who have failed to respond, and
  • seek additional assessments .
A minimum of three useable reports is required for Large Grants, three for APD/ARF Fellowships and five for SRFs. Since all assessors' reports, suitably edited, have to be forwarded to applicants for rejoinders prior to the second principal meeting at the end of August additional assessments are usually sought in haste from local assessors.

August meeting

The objective of the second meeting is to prepare final recommendations for funding of applications. Procedures for grants and fellowships are somewhat different.

Large grants

Recommendations are prepared in a three step procedure.

  • Each panel is presented with a total budget.
  • The panel ranks applications on the basis of assessments.
  • The budget is distributed according to the ranking until exhaustion.
Panel ratings can differ from the average assessor ratings for several well-defined reasons, e.g., assessor reports which are clearly inconsistent with other reports are discounted, the opinion of assessors with an apparent bias, one way or another, toward the application are ignored, the rejoinders of the applicants justify modification of the ratings.

The final panel rating is determined by a 60% weighting for quality of the project and 40% for quality of the researchers, consistent with the interpretation of the assessors' reports

Fellowships

The total number of fellowships is determined in advance, e.g., in 1999 there will probably be

  • 55 Postdoctoral Fellowships (APDs),
  • 30 QEII/Research Fellowships (ARFs),
  • 15 Senior Research Fellowships (SRFs).
There are no quotas for particular disciplines. Selection is entirely on merit.

Recommendations for each category of fellowship are prepared in three steps;

  • each discipline panel prepares a merit ranking,
  • the complete committee meets to arbitrate between panels and prepare a combined merit ranking
  • Fellowship offers and reserves are decided according to the combined ranking.
The arbitration process for each category is in two steps
  • a uniform quota from each panel's ranking is adopted,
  • each panel then presents its two next best candidates and the committee decides relative ranking after extensive discussion. This procedure is repeated until the required number of candidates and reserves has been selected.

Commentary

The RGC and RTTC panels work in close coordination in the April meeting but their responsibilities are more clearly separated in the August meeting. There is inter-panel discussion on the merit rankings but the budgeting of the large grants is decided by the RGC panels and the final selection of Fellows by the RTTC.

The guidelines for fellowships, other than QEIIs, allow preference for Australian citizens and permanent residents. At the SRF level preference may also be given to current ARC Fellows and applicants not holding tenured positions in Australia. These preferences do not usually override merit considerations.

The arbitration process for the fellowships can, and does, introduce disparities in the number of awards meted out to each discipline.

This site is located in the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (MSI) at the ANU
Please send comments and suggestions to Derek.Robinson@anu.edu.au