Funding models | The Research Whisperer

Why should I bother?

4 April 2017 by researchwhisper 1 Comment

Tim Pitman is a Research Development Adviser in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University.

He has worked in research development since 2007. His own research interest is on higher education policy, with a particular focus on increasing the representation of disadvantaged students in universities.

Tim tweet from @timothypitman. His ORCID is 0000-0002-4237-2203.

Photo of street art by Christos Barbalis | unsplash.com

I’ve been working in research development for a decade now and almost all of that has been focused on the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS).

Much of the ‘art’ of finding funding is universal across disciplines, but there’s also a need for research support that is more targeted towards HASS researchers.

I feel this especially keenly every year when researchers are submitting applications for Australian Research Council (ARC) funding (roughly equivalent to the National Science Foundation in the USA and the national research councils in other countries).

Often, institutional support processes designed to improve the quality of Australian Research Council applications appear to focus on the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.

This can leave HASS researchers scratching their heads, wondering whether that key observation, or sage bit of advice applies to them as well. Read more of this post

Filed under Be strategic, Research culture Tagged with ARC, common mistakes, Funding models, grants, HASS, HASS vs STEM, Should I apply, STEM, Tim Pitman

Why the hell am I doing a PhD?

3 May 2016 by Jonathan O'Donnell 39 Comments

No entry, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Did I mention that I’ve enrolled in a Masters by Research, looking at crowdfunding? No? It must’ve slipped my mind.

Actually, I’m a bit shy about talking about it. I don’t want to jinx it.

I want to upgrade to a PhD, if all goes well. But I’m scared it won’t go well. All my hopes and fears sit within it. I want it to go well, and I believe that I can do it, but I’m still scared.

I’m scared for a lot of reasons. I watched my partner take five years to do her PhD. Five years! She spent a whole year on one chapter. It almost broke her. A lot of my friends have done PhDs and only one of them had a good time. Everybody else hated it, and some of them never finished. So, I swore that I’d never do one.

From past experience, I know that I am, at best, an average student. I love the idea of studying; I just don’t like doing the work. It took me five years to struggle through my undergraduate degree. Too much time playing, not enough time studying! Having no clue why I was there didn’t help either!

My previous efforts to get a PhD didn’t get past the ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I had a PhD?’ burst of enthusiasm.

Oh yes, I’ve been down this road before. More than once, actually. I work in a university. I work with researchers every single day. There seemed to be a million reasons why I should do a PhD.

Nowadays, not so much. There seem to be a million reasons not to do a PhD. Read more of this post

Filed under Careers, Research culture Tagged with career, crowdfunding, Funding models, phd, research crowdfunding, research motivation, self-reflection

In defence of the crowd

9 December 2014 by Jonathan O'Donnell 6 Comments

This post was originally submitted as a comment, in response to Milking the Crowd, by Melonie Fullick at Speculative Diction.

A view of the climate change protest crowd in Melbourne

So many people II, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

Melonie has written a thoughtful piece that highlights some of the potential issues with crowdfunding. It is a debate that is worth having. I’m pro-crowdfunding, but I’d be the first to admit that there are issues to be sorted out.

There are specific problems around crowdfunding, but I don’t think that lack of peer review is one of them. While government research funding is usually peer reviewed, industry and philanthropic funding sources generally aren’t. They are competitive, but they aren’t peer reviewed. Industry funding applications are often selected by a manager or committee, on advice from an in-house expert. They are then approved by a board of directors. Some large philanthropic schemes use peer review, but most don’t. In Australia (and, I’m guessing, elsewhere), most funds are distributed by committee, perhaps on advice from a program manager, who apply a score based on their selection criteria.

Non-expert publics do not have the same priorities as peers in your field, just as industry research sponsors and philanthropic organisations do not have the same priorities as peers in your field.

Crowdfunding is, as you point out, a campaign for donations. Donations to universities for research (which include scholarship funds, professorial chairs, building funds as well as research project funds) are never peer-reviewed, in my experience.

Moreover, this absence of peer review can be recast as a benefit of crowdfunding. There are some areas of promising work that find it very difficult to gain peer support, in part because the go against the common wisdom and, sometimes, because they are reworking areas that are perceived to have been ‘done’ already. There are also some types of research, such as replication studies and taxonomy work, that find it very difficult to secure government funds. The Australian Research Council, for example, explicitly says that it will not fund:

“compilation of data, computer programs, research aids and tools; descriptive data compilations, catalogues or bibliographies; or teaching materials.”

These restrictions don’t apply to crowdfunding.

The Australian Research Council also won’t fund anything less than A$30,000 per annum. In part, this is because peer review is expensive. Crowdfunders are happy to fund small projects: top-up funds, student projects, outreach programs, all sorts of things that it wouldn’t be worth peer-reviewing via a government funding scheme.

The research game

1 July 2014 by Jonathan O'Donnell 1 Comment

World of Warcraft screencap by Natalie Ford (https://www.flickr.com/photos/natalief)

People often say that research, and particularly research funding, is a bit of a game. It isn’t meant as a compliment.

When people say this, they are usually complaining about being excluded. They go on to talk about how you need to be ‘in the know’, about how people on funding bodies give money to their ‘mates’. Often they spend a fair amount of energy trying to work out how to game the system.

Not surprisingly, I don’t subscribe to those views.

I subscribe to the view that research funding agencies work hard to make sure that they are as fair as they can be. I believe that, while there are historical biases in most systems of funding, they do a very good job of channelling funds to the best researchers available. And that, in general, our funding models serve us well.

It is worth thinking about how the research cycle works, and it doesn’t help to disparage it too much.

Given my role, I think about research a lot. Mostly I’m thinking about the funding application that is sitting right in front of me at that moment. When I have a chance, though, I like to look at research through different lenses and from different perspectives. If you want to learn more about what you do, look at it from a paradigm outside your own.

In that spirit, I’d like to take a moment to look at three different types of computer games as metaphors for the research process. Despite my attempt to dress it up in fancy words, there isn’t anything very special going on here – I just think it will be fun.

Filed under Research culture Tagged with candy crush saga, Eve online, farmville, Funding models, metaphors, minecraft, world of warcraft, wow

Long-term grants

12 March 2013 by researchwhisper 7 Comments

Dr Ben Kraal is a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia. He works with the People and Systems Lab on various projects.

In the broadest sense, what he does can be described as Design Research. Ben’s background is in what people call “IT”, though he has spent most of his time thinking about how people use technology in their work and life.

His PhD was about the lived experience of people who use large vocabulary speech recognition systems in the workplace.

Ben tweets from @bjkraal and blogs at Not Easily Obvious.

Chalk trains (Photo by Ben Kraal)

Recent ideas for “fixing” research grants have proposed long-term grants as a potential solution.

Nobel Prize-winning astronomer, Brian Schmidt (ANU), proposed the idea and it showed up in a Minister’s speech too.

As a post-doc on soft money, long-term grants only seem to solve the problems of established professors whose problem isn’t getting grants, but keeping their lab or group liquid for the medium to long-term.

I fear that long-term grants will turn the early career researcher’s (ECR) problem of getting a grant into the problem of getting a job. But with fewer, bigger projects about, that could get harder, not easier.

Filed under funding Tagged with Ben Kraal, funding, Funding models, grants, research, research culture

Philanthropy: Think differently and make a difference

24 July 2012 by researchwhisper 1 Comment

Dr Noel Chambers

Dr Noel Chambers has more than 20 years experience in start-up companies, commercial research and biotechnology. He has successfully commercialized his own research, held senior management positions in research and business development and acted as the Chief Executive Officer of a number of biotechnology and health related companies.

In 2009, Dr Chambers’ attention turned to philanthropy where he led the establishment of Research Australia’s successful philanthropy program as the Director of Philanthropy.

He is a member of the Australian Government’s Advisory Council on Intellectual Property (ACIP) and chair of the review into collaborations between publicly‐funded research organisations and industry.

This post originally appeared in Noel’s blog, Philanthrovate, on 4 March 2012.

“The tough truth is that the drug development funding system is broken where risk is highest.” — Michael J Fox

The drug development system is broken early in the innovation pathway. Similar analogies can be observed across most high technology sectors including the environment, energy and health. In health, this not only affects drugs but devices, diagnostics, biologics and research tools.

The difficulty in translating discoveries from early research to larger collaborative partners with the knowledge and resources to progress the discovery along the research continuum is well documented. It is often referred to as the ‘Valley of Death’.

FasterCures: Crossing Over the Valley of Death [PDF of original report (5.7 Mb)]

Traversing the ‘Valley of Death’ is not only about the science. The ‘Valley of Death’ arises because of a systematic funding gap and also because of a knowledge and reward gap. Reputation, networks, administration, the track record of the organization and research teams, as well as project management and negotiation skills all impact upon the ability to attract potential collaborators. Intellectual property, market opportunity and a demonstrable competitive advantage comprise some of the other significant factors influencing the establishment of successful industry collaborations.

Filed under Be strategic Tagged with dissemination, Drug development, funding, Funding models, Noel Chambers, philanthrophy, Valley of death

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The Research Whisperer

Why should I bother?

Why the hell am I doing a PhD?

In defence of the crowd

The research game

Long-term grants

Philanthropy: Think differently and make a difference

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