ARC Tracker

Black text on white background under a square blue icon on the top left. Screenshot of tweet from the ARC saying they’ll announce outcomes of Centres of Excellence on Tuesday 9th Dec. 2025.

ARC says they’ll announce Centres of Excellence outcomes tomorrow (Tuesday 9th Dec).

This is more than 2 months late, most likely due to the new security checking requirements for ARC grants. Centres of Excellence grants also need to have been approved by the Minister.

Nope

"Under the proposed organisation structure, it is proposed that 21 APS positions are removed and 16 APS positions are created; this is a net reduction of 5 APS roles."

To say this another way, potentially 21 people's jobs will be gone; some of those may be hired into other roles.

The ARC CEO has issued a public statement – a public statement they could have made weeks ago – about their proposed restructure & job losses.

"No final decisions have been made." 🙃

Black text on white background underneath the Australian coat of arms at the top. Larger text near the top says "SENATOR DAVID POCOCK", "MEDIA RELEASE" and the headline in the largest print says "ARC RESTRUCTURE RISKS JOBS"?.

“This feels like yet another attack on our research community that is already under siege”

Senator @davidpocock.bsky.social has issued a media release about the ARC's proposed restructure and job cuts 👇

BTW: The Canberra Times article is paywalled. But some lovely soul has archived it👇

Amid all this, there seems to be no clear rationale given for either a restructure or, more importantly, cutting jobs right now.

As Sen. @davidpocock.bsky.social said, the Strategic Examination of R&D hasn't been completed.

And the ARC has proposed a massive overhaul of it's entire grants system.

Emails reveal planned job cuts at research funding body Research council staff face jobs amid 'secret' restructure.

This is quite an investigation into ARC’s proposed restructure & job cuts by @jennaprice.bsky.social.

You know you’ve botched your “review” when several staff complain to a Senator!

ARC also ran a witch hunt to find people who might’ve “leaked”.

Ugly stuff.

If it's the one time the ARC are excellent about contacting researchers, it's when they want something from us!

That's a bit odd, for sure. Certainly the email notification is the norm, and I assume that's automated (why would I assume such a silly thing?!). I'd first check your spam (you prob already have), just in case, but otherwise contact ARC about it. Weird.

The way the ARC "answers" questions on notice is … not helpful, no matter how carefully things are worded. They do not answer the question that was asked. They invent a different, adjacent question, and answer that instead. No consequences. Frustrating!

Update: GRRRR! ARC has been excused from Senate Estimates, according to the "live schedule".

😡

They were bumped from the last Estimates session (Oct) as well!

#saveozscience #saveozresearchers #nhmrc #arc #mrff #narf | Gina Ravenscroft Thank you to Senator David Pocock & Monique Ryan for your leadership on this important issue   Investment: We need greater investment in science and biomedical research, we can not afford to wait any ...

Ideas & medical funding were discussed yesterday. It was hard to listen to their response. There’s people & their very much loved careers behind those decisions www.linkedin.com/posts/gina-r...

The ARC is due to appear before Senate Estimates tonight. As usual, they're last on the schedule, at 9pm (Canberra time) ▶️ parlwork.aph.gov.au/committee/de... ("live" schedule).

I hope the committee asks about the job losses & restructure the ARC are proposing👇

ARC grant scheme timetable, including open, close and anticipated outcome announcement dates for Expressions Of Interest and full applications, plus rejoinder periods and selection meeting dates.

#ARCschedule Dec25

Outcomes expected … at some point, for Centres of Excellence – now 5 weeks late!

Other events:
🔹Close: Discovery Projects Expressions of Interest
🔹Take a damn break; you’ve more than earned it!

Data ▶️ docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

“I published 20 papers and worked a whole month so I could apply for my own salary for 4 years and lab equipment that’s only enough to build a small ant farm, and all I got was this lousy t-shirt”

Every opportunity politicians provide for you to tell them about how chronic underfunding of research in Australia is affecting your particular fields, people, working conditions etc. is extremely important.

Fill out the form here: lnkd.in/g8A_PAZG

@ginaravenscroft.bsky.social & #NARF are collecting impact statements from Australian researchers

‘ Please consider sharing your story about the impact of Australia's chronic underfunding of science and biomedical research.’
lnkd.in/g8A_PAZG

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To add context, part of why there were so many more applicants is because they moved DECRA back six months, effectively skipping funding the scheme for a year. They had to extend eligibility as a result, so this was essentially two years in one. But with no adjustment to number of grants awarded.

Low success rate in early career grants ‘deeply disappointing’ - Research Professional News “Decay continues” as Australian Research Council’s Decra scheme announces 13.1 per cent success rate

Here's a report from Jenny Sinclair @jsresearchpro.bsky.social on the low success rate for DECRAs this week, driven by high demand and low Government funding for early career researchers in Australia.

[Free article in @resprofnews.bsky.social]

I only have rumours. I don't like to post rumours; they're usually wrong. So far, two people from different unis claim someone in their research offices said "CoE announcements should be next week". But I've not got any confirmation of where the ROs got that info.

I get it. But will that obsession would reduce or increase if ARC operations budget was smaller? If your (legislated) job is to run a fair system, but with no $ to do it all, you'll make strict rules over those you outsource it to (unis), with attendant comms difficulties —> stricter rules again.

… legislation forbids using operations money for grants; they are separate items in the Government's Budget. And even if the ARC could slop a bit of operations cash into the grant bucket, 3% ain't going to shift the dial. The ARC's grants budget needs to triple. So does its operations budget.

Staffing is certainly an issue. But delays to Centres of Excellence (which is the only scheme to have delays this year) are due to the new baroque, lengthy security checking processes all national grants are now subject to. In this case, we can't blame the ARC.

… in-house (by the ARC). And you need to have a whole complicated compliance bureaucracy instead of, say, ARC being staffed to actually help researchers submit eligible, compliant proposals. This is the model in other countries. The difference is resourcing.

Finally …

An important reason ARC operates like it does is resourcing: its operations cost only 3% of the grants it administers. This compares with more like ~10% in most other places. On 3%, you can't do much. You outsource basically everything to the unis, who duplicate effort that *should* be done …

Yep!

The ARC will soon be overhauling its entire grants system. They've never undertaken such a huge set of changes. Doing it while sacking existing staff and restructuring … I just … 🤯😡

Very pleased to see that @greens.org.au have won an inquiry into job cuts at CSIRO

Would be great to see attention brought to bear on restructuring (cuts?) at the Australian Research Council too

Why these attacks on science in the public interest in Australia❓ Who does this serve❓

Are the job losses and restructure being considered by the ARC because of this?