Investment in HASS research infrastructure
Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) is a potential
HASS has distinctive characteristics. The established process for
area for national research infrastructure investment
scoping investments may need refinements
World-class national research infrastructure helps to increase the impact of
Relative to other areas, HASS is broad, complicated and relatively new to the investment
Australian research and make it more international y competitive. It helps
process.
researchers to conduct high quality and rigorous research, increases
collaboration, improves ef iciency and helps to unlock innovative research
HASS is complex:
methodologies.
• It’s
big: 43% of academic staf are in HASS disciplines.1
• It’s
broad: Includes everything from linguistics to criminology to anthropology to literature
The Australian Government has a long history of investing in this type of
and sociology.
infrastructure, alongside other partners including universities. Traditional y, these
investments have usual y been made in the `hard’ and medical sciences fields,
HASS also has some distinctive chal enges and characteristics:
with investment in HASS mostly limited to gal eries, libraries and museums.
• It’s
rarely considered an area for innovation: There is a perception that the hard
sciences are the source of innovation and progress.
Advocates for national investment in HASS research infrastructure have been
• It has
rarely seen large-scale research infrastructure investment: There is a
successful in establishing the sector as a potential area for investment.
perception that Australia’s HASS sector is behind other jurisdictions in research
Accordingly, the Investment Plan / Roadmap identified HASS as an important
infrastructure.
area for which research infrastructure support should be considered.
• It has
capability issues: There is a perception that the sector wil need to invest in
human capability to ful y unlock the benefits of infrastructure.
The established process for scoping investments has been designed for
• It has
complicated custodianship: The majority of HASS col ections are held by
investments in hard science (e.g. enabling synthetic biology). There is a strong
government and national institutions, whereas most researchers are in universities.
argument that the established process may not be suitable for HASS. In
particular, the scale (dollar value) of proposals in HASS is likely to be very
While Government investments need to consider relative priorities across the whole
dif erent to other more capital intensive fields.
research sector, and HASS (like al disciplines) wil need to work within established
frameworks to demonstrate the value of any investment, the Department acknowledges the
The next step in this process is to determine a process to scope potential
need to consider the best process for scoping HASS investment proposals.
investments in HASS, with input from the Australian HASS research community.
Because of this complexity and the chal enges, and the lack of clarity about the best possible
process, the Department commissioned dandolopartners – a management consulting firm –
to support the development of an appropriate process for scoping HASS investment
proposals.
1 Mapping the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in Australia 2014
1
A discussion with the HASS community about investment in research infrastructure
On behalf of the Department, dandolopartners led a
The release of this discussion paper isn’t the end of the
process to hear the sector’s views
conversation.
The HASS community wants sound investment decisions made about research
Much progress has been made over the past few months, and there is an opportunity to
infrastructure, because this enables competitive, quality research for Australia’s
keep moving the work forward.
largest group of researchers, which in turn leads to bet er outcomes across the
broader community.
In [MONTH], 2019 the Department wil commence a scoping study that wil look in far more
detail at the possibility of national research infrastructure in HASS. This scoping study wil :
The best way to ensure investments reflect what is real y needed for world-class
• Department to provide bul et points on intended aims of scoping study.
research in HASS is for the sector to help inform and shape the Government’s
• Department to provide bul et points on intended aims of scoping study.
decisions on investments in research infrastructure.
• Department to provide bul et points on intended aims of scoping study.
dandolopartners developed a proposed framework that aimed to maximise the
After conclusion of the scoping study, in line with the consistent views of the sector it is
opportunities for investment in HASS research infrastructure and assist HASS
possible that any funding commit ed for national research infrastructure investment in HASS
organisations needing to pursue ambitious national infrastructure projects, by
might be al ocated through a supported application process. This wil al ow high-quality
proposing a way to identify, describe and assess investments.
proposals to be supported through the application process, and for the process to be tested.
This thinking was tested through consultation with the Department and sixteen
The draft next steps in the process wil be along the fol owing lines:
highly regarded and influential stakeholders from the HASS community. These
• Release of this dandolopartners paper
included:
• Hold a series of discussions and roundtable events, to test a proposed application
• the academies of humanities and social sciences
process.
• key executive and research staff from leading Australian universities, and
• Development of an application process and form
• key executive staff from national HASS institutions.
• Call for EOIs
• Shortlisting of a smal number of highly prospective, high impact proposals
The rest of this document describes these frameworks, which have been revised
• A supported process to further develop applications
in accordance with the feedback of HASS stakeholders. It provides:
• Submission of developed applications
• a definition for national research infrastructure in HASS
• a framework for describing proposals and their benefits
• a set of hurdle and evaluative criteria to support assessment of benefits, and
[these are early ideas about next steps – for Departmental determination]
• a range of examples to demonstrate the type of proposals that could be
funded.
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Describing investments
Decision makers need to understand the nature of investments, what constitutes them and what benefits are likely to result.
HASS stakeholders helped to define this.
What research infrastructure is being sought?
Infrastructure can be categorised as:
• Physical (hard infrastructure).
• Digital (soft infrastructure), including data and software.
• People (‘wet’ infrastructure), including capability building.
Any one of these three points could be
What functional change would the infrastructure enable?
the starting point for identifying potential
Investments in national research infrastructure enable new abilities or
investments. E.g. objective to reduce
bet er ways to do research such as:
interstate criminal activity (outcome)
Al potential investments
• Broaden access and linkages between researchers and sources.
might lead to better sharing of police
wil need to answer
• Introduce new information and new ways to use information.
data (functional change) through digital
three questions
• Improve detail / accuracy / ef iciency / speed of research.
infrastructure for real-time, secure
• Increase standardisation and convergence.
sharing of police notes (infrastructure)
• Reduce duplication of ef ort and investment.
• Further the ‘open science’ agenda.
This is to be expected when developing
ideas for investment, but it wil be
important for stakeholders to ful y
What outcomes would the infrastructure ultimately support?
explain what their investment is and
• These are the ultimate objectives for investing in the infrastructure,
what it wil enable.
and are general y flow-on effects (e.g. improved cultural
understanding, bet er government decision making, greater impact
for research and infrastructure investment, stronger HASS sector,
new discoveries, commercialisation).
• These objectives could be sorted into social, economic, cultural
and/or environmental outcomes.
• Output measures, such as citations, are not examples of
outcomes, and do not justify investments.
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Framework to assess investments
There needs to be a consistent, comparable approach for determining the value of NRI investments. HASS stakeholders
helped to refine an explanation of criteria for HASS related investments.
There are different types of criteria that can be applied to investments:
1: Hurdle criteria
2: Evaluative criteria
Base requirements that al NRI investments wil need to meet
Criteria that identified what is considered valuable to help prioritise investments
• Objectives of the infrastructure are clear and of national scale, with a clear cost
•
Of national and research significance – including impact on Australia’s global
and plan for implementation and ongoing management.
positioning in research supported, whether there is a unique Australian need,
• The investment does not duplicate other existing infrastructure and there is a
address national interest needs (i.e. in key government priorities), (likely) impact on
market failure* in establishing the infrastructure.
university rankings and research impact ratings and/or a link to national research
priorities. A high level of international significance is of value also.
• Wide and national need for infrastructure demonstrated across users, institutions
and disciplines.
•
Return on investment – including level of access use generation, level of merit
based access, access and use by Commonwealth agencies, whole of life costs, level
• Co-investment from a range of partners – including the lead agent – involving cash
of co-investment from applicant and other partners, and potential revenue streams
and/or in-kind contributions
and returns on investment.
• Col aborations have been identified and are viable for the infrastructure, including
•
Impact – including size of public benefit provided or enabled and level of innovation
a stakeholder engagement plan (including industry, users, institutions,
in research achieved or enabled.
government, relevant communities)
•
Governance / risk – including management, implementation, risk and asset
• The infrastructure provides open merit-based access to infrastructure and
management, decommissioning/transition plans
research output or data against FAIR principles, noting any appropriate security
and access control.
Notes on process
• A staged process is anticipated, to reduce burden on applicants and to provide support available where required. Greater government support may be needed for development of
some proposals (e.g. facilitated applications, scoping studies).
• Investments wil be made for a fixed period
• Consistent with commitments to regular Roadmaps and Investment Plans, al infrastructure investments by Government wil be periodically re-assessed for future funding priority,
including against alternative investment opportunities
* Market failure in this case covers benefits being too distant or too dispersed to incentivise any single institution to invest or step in.
5
Examples
This table demonstrates how the frameworks would be used to filter and prioritise investments
(1) Could be this…
(2) But not this…
Why
• A time capsule of social continuity for research
• Storage of “orphaned” datasets
• (2) Data storage is responsibility of custodian
investigation
unless national need and of high-volume / use
• Australian standards for HASS metadata
• Data management and cleaning of individual
• (2) Storage and cleaning is generally the
datasets
responsibility of data custodian / owner
• A federated research cloud service providing
• An intranet for a group of universities
• Access is open to al researchers in (1) and
Australia’s research community with computing • Training in accessing and manipulating data
supports innovations in research as opposed to
infrastructure and software.1 Researchers can
(2) where benefits of investment are only for a
store, access, and run data, remotely, rapidly
smal group or an institutions own responsibility
and autonomously
• (1) training is focussed on how to use the tools
and resources, not general research skil s
• 20 institutions across Australia seeking to
• NGV (National Gal ery of Victoria) wants
• (2) is outside of definition — it is institutional
digitise assets at risk and in high demand
funding to digitise its records
infrastructure not national research
through share equipment, other outputs very
infrastructure
open
• Support indigenous research through
• Col ection of longitudinal population data
• (2) is a research survey whereas (1) is open
functionality to link government data with
tools to bring together data
indigenous research surveys, supported by
specialist tools
Other supporting documentation to guide the scoping study and any investment proposals appear in appendix 1:
• Collated list of national and international examples of HASS infrastructure, existing and prospective
• 7 case studies to demonstrate the application of the framework in this document (note these are to demonstrate the application of the framework and are not sample
applications. Applications would require significantly more detail, quantification, and examples).
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1 This example is based on the Nectar Research Cloud. See https:/ ardc.edu.au/services/nectar-research-cloud/
