A controversial change to Australian Research Council funding rules disqualified academic grant applications totalling $22m, according to government documents tabled in the Senate on Thursday.
A total of 32 funding applications were deemed ineligible by the federal government agency as a result of a new rule that bans applicants from citing preprint material in proposals for funding.
The rule – described as “unworkable and inconsistent with standard practice” – disqualified otherwise eligible researchers in the 2021 funding round of Discovery Early Career Researcher Awards and Future Fellowships.
All of the applications hit by the rule were in the physical sciences, in which academic preprints are widely used.
The Senate passed the order for production of documents earlier this week, requiring the government to provide de-identified information about fellowship applications by Thursday morning.
The motion was moved by Greens senator and education spokesperson Mehreen Faruqi and co-sponsored by Victorian Labor senator Kim Carr.
Faruqi said the preprint rule should be rescinded “as a matter of urgency”.
“All applications that were thrown out should be immediately reconsidered for grant funding without the nonsensical rule hindering their eligibility. Critically, applications currently under consideration by the ARC should not be subject to the rule.
“This whole saga has hit a nerve about the broken and declining state of research funding in this country. Researchers deserve so much better than this frankly shameful treatment by the ARC.”
The presidents of peak scientific bodies representing researchers in physics, astronomy, chemistry, mathematics and statistics wrote to the ARC on Tuesday, saying they were not aware of any consultation before the rule was implemented.
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“We urge the ARC to rescind this rule, as it is unworkable and inconsistent with standard practice in our disciplines.”
The letter, which was also signed by academics including Nobel laureate and vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, Prof Brian Schmidt, added: “We are dismayed that promising research careers have been impacted and perhaps even ended because fellowship applicants cited preprints and other documents housed on preprint servers.”
“We strongly recommend the ARC reverse its rule change as a matter of urgency, and permit authors to cite any relevant material in accordance with disciplinary conventions.”
The president of the Australian Academy of Science, Prof John Shine, wrote separately on Monday to the federal education minister, Alan Tudge, to express concerns about the rule change. An open letter from “concerned members of the Australian research community” has also amassed more than 600 signatories.
The ARC said on Monday it was “looking into the issues raised” by the academic community about the preprints rule change. Its official Twitter account posted: “Thank you to everyone who has contacted the ARC to provide your disciplinary perspective about including preprints in applications for funding.”
Last week, an ARC spokesperson said the rule “ensures that all applications are treated the same”.
“This process is designed to ensure that an application has been treated fairly and consistently in the selection process.”
But Guardian Australia understands that not all funding proposals that cited preprints were affected by the rule.
An Australian researcher who runs the Twitter account ARC Tracker said they were aware of at least 26 grant applications, which were ultimately unsuccessful but not deemed ineligible, that cited preprints.
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