GENERAL COMMENTS This article is essentially a plea to inject some humanity into the

grants’ submission process of an Australian medical research funding agency that continues to limit itself to a single annual grants’ call. The timing of the call also coincides with the major school holiday period within Australia.

A public explanation/justification as to why the agency restricts itself to one call is difficult to find and the restriction is at odds with numerous international examples where for a number of years applicants have had access to multiple calls and can schedule their workloads accordingly.

The grants’ peer review process is expected to be (Wood and Wessely 2003):

• effective - supports the research intended by the program

• efficient - in terms of time, money and moral energy

• accountable - complies with the relevant statutory and regulatory requirements, due process in the reviewing and awarding of funds, the work proposed has indeed been carried out

• responsive - policy makers can direct research effort and support emerging areas

• rational - process is transparent and is seen to be reasonable

• fair - equitable treatment of all applicants, ensures high levels of integrity

• valid - measuring tools must also be valid and reliable

This article’s focus falls primarily within the ‘efficient’, ‘rational’ and ‘fair’ categories. Given that tradeoffs are inevitable in realizing all expectations regarding the peer review process the question is what constitutes a defensible/appropriate and workable balance for the NHMRC? In this regard the article is useful and should be considered in the context of the specific recommendation of the 2013 McKeon Strategic Review of Health and Medical Research that the competitive grant processes should be streamlined and aligned with other major granting agencies.

However, it should be noted that as the focus is on process, the article offers no real insights regarding the more fundamental issue that: ‘Australia has no agency awarding grants for ground-breaking, frontier research on the basis of excellence alone. Nor do we have one that realistically prioritises research addressing Australia’s grand challenges’ (Wood 2011).

Context/background

The article would be strengthened through more commentary on the number of applications to the NHMRC and associated success rates and how these fit with international trends. Documented concerns from high profile professionals within the research community would also be helpful (cf Hilmer 2013 and Nicholson 2013). The 2010 Science magazine editorial by Bruce Alberts Overbuilding Research Capacity also contains some useful comparative information on success rates and research career issues for the article.

A brief description of ‘managed’ and ‘responsive’ mode funding in research councils such as that provided by the ESF (2011) would be useful. ‘Managed’ mode having a specified date for its opening and the ‘responsive’ mode where the call is continuously open. In this regard Box 1 could replace ‘ongoing’ to ‘continuously open’ or something equivalent.

Methodology

The methodology needs greater explanation. It is unclear precisely who was targeted in the survey and what grants’ submission experience they needed to have to be considered eligible to provide feedback for the survey.

The number of respondents is very small and claims about ‘representativeness’ not really valid. Nonetheless, the responses provided are clearly indicative of genuine concerns and stresses held by some within the research community and warrant attention, particularly in view of the McKeon report recommendations.

Given the small numbers of respondents the location and Go8 information is not really that helpful. It might be more useful to cite

comments in terms of the respondent career stage (to some extent indicated by appointment level) and whether or not the respondent has been a recipient of an NHMRC grant. Table 1 needs to be reconsidered in this light. Also it is not clear why there is a breakdown in this table to differentiate between ‘all researchers’ and ‘researchers providing comments’.

Other

The authors could consider whether pre-proposals such as used by the French National Research agency and limited to 5 pages might be an effective way of reducing both reviewer and applicant stress.

I’d encourage revising the title of the article to make clear that the results reported are from a small-scale inquiry.

The writing style needs to be tightened and the ‘Work-home conflict’ section page 18 needs far more explanation as to the relevance of the US survey. It would also be worthwhile considering more explicitly potential stress issues for the NHMRC’s staff in being restricted to one grants’ call.

The thematic categories need to be sharpened so that their meaning is immediately clear – eg ‘top priority’ and ‘career progress’ and ‘benefits’

Why are there quotes around ‘ask the researcher’ – it looks somewhat clumsy.

The abstract and conclusions needs to be recast in view of the above comments.

Refs:

• Alberts, Bruce (2010) Editorial. Overbuilding Research Capacity. Science vol 329 p 1257.

• European Science Foundation, European Peer Review Guide, March 2011.

• Fred Hilmer, Don't give up the research funding fight, The Australian, November 20, 2013.

• Larissa Nicholson, ‘ Scientists stress need for overhaul of Science funding’, The Canberra Times, 19 December 2013.

• Fiona Wood, ‘ERA: an ailing emperor’s new clothes’, Australian R&D Review Feb-Mar: 12-13. Invited Op Ed. 2011.

• Fiona Wood and Simon Wessely, 2003, Peer Review of Grant Applications, in Peer Review in Health Sciences, 2nd Edition, F.

• Godlee, & T. Jefferson (eds) British Medical Association Publications, pp. 14-44.

GENERAL COMMENTS

Reference 4 - note format error and typo in title (P22)