New money, old system

August 2018

New health and medical research grants totalling $192 million bring the total amount of funding the NHMRC has delivered this year to $253 million for 339 project - it is around one third of the more than $850 million the NHMRC will provide in 2018. But the new funding also signals the approaching end of the current NHMRC competive grant program with a new research funding regime about to commence.

The August announcement includes $188 million for seven competitive grant schemes:

• $24.4 million for 55 Career Development Fellowships;
• $39.9 million for 16 Centres of Research Excellence;
• $14.5 million for 20 Development Grants;
• $37.7 for 115 Early Career Fellowships;
• $7.5 million for 14 Practitioner Fellowships;
• $58.7 million for 78 Research Fellowships; and
• $5.5 million for 5 grants under the Targeted Call for Research into Indigenous Social and Emotional Wellbeing scheme.

While the NHMRC is delivering new grants in the 2018 funding round, the agency is also preparing for its new restructured grant program commencing at the end of this year.

The changes aim to encourage more innovation and creativity, provide better opportunities also for early career researchers, and ease the application process.

It's a radical overhaul, with the competitive grants set around four schemes:

• Investigator Grants supporting all career stages;
• Synergy Grants for multidisciplinary teams;
• Ideas Grants that will focus on creative science addressing specific questions; and
• Strategic and Leveraging Grants for projects, such as clinical trials and cohort studies, addressing national needs.

The NHMRC is also introducing a new peer review process it developed last year, and has detailed in a webinar in April 2018.

NHMRC chief executive officer Professor Anne Kelso described the new process as more streamlined that should achieve more than one round of grants per year, with staggered periods of application across the four schemes.

The changes also aim to improve confidence of the sector in the peer review process. It

But in her presentation Professor Kelso pointed out that the new process will face significant uncertainties in the first year, such as in the number of applications to each of the new schemes - "They could be quite high while people test the new schemes" - which in turn will determine the number assessors required.

Kelso also remarked on other significant changes in the way grants will be administered, with a new grants management system that will replace the RGMS, which currently enables researchers to apply for, track and administer NHMRC grants online, as well as participate in peer review. There is also now the requirement that all govenrment grants are published through the Grant Connect system.

"There is a lot of change in the moment for the sector," Kelso said.

The NHMRC will accomodate this through a staged impplementation of some aspects of the new peer review process.