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Considerable pressure is applied to faculties, departments and scholars to apply for funding, and relative success in attracting it is given excessive weight in evaluating research performance. This may be productive in disciplines that require large amounts of research funding. But it can have many negative effects, especially in other disciplines, such as:  \n[a. it](a. it) is a grossly inaccurate method of evaluating research performance  \nb. the inundation of the ARC with excessive numbers of grant applications  \nc. the diversion of funding from applicants who desperately need it to those who have much less need for it  \nd. an enormous waste of time and effort on doomed grant applications that would have been better spent writing books and journal articles  \ne. the giving of excessive weight to “grantsmanship” at the expense of substantive scholarship in determining appointments and applications for promotion  \nf. subtle distorting effects on research agendas, as projects are devised in order to attract income rather than for their inherent interest and importance, and consequent damage to scholarly morale and enthusiasm; and  \ng. the distortion of research agendas across entire disciplines.  \nI have taught law in a leading (Group of 8) Australian law school for twenty-five years. Over those years, various pathologies have come to afflict universities in Australia. One is the current manic obsession with maximising research funding from external sources, especially the competitive research grant schemes administered by the Australian Research Council (ARC) . I have no quarrel with the ARC. Its various grant schemes provide invaluable assistance to many researchers in this country, from which I myself have benefited on several occasions and hope to benefit again in the future. My complaint is with the way that research income is misused in evaluating research performance, and setting research objectives within our universities. I am concerned with problems that are systemic to the sector, and from what I hear, are worse in many universities other than in my own.  \nUntil about 15 years ago, legal scholars seldom applied for research grants or other external research  \nfunding.The vast majority, even of the most prolific and eminent, had little need for it.Their research required a good library, a well equipped office, opportunities to meet their peers at conferences and on sabbatical leave, and plenty of time for reading, reflection and writing. Sometimes a modest amount of research assistance was useful. All of this was usually provided by their universities.There were exceptions: a small number of scholars relied much more heavily on research assistants for library research. But most found that assistants were of little use, because their own deep knowledge of the field was essential both to locating relevant material, and to analysing it effectively. Some legal scholars conducted empirical research, and did require expensive assistance in organising and administering questionnaires, tabulating results, and so forth. Those who needed additional funds for research or other assistance were free to apply for it. Others were equally free not to do so. My impression is that this was also true of  \nvol. 50, no. 2, 2008 Research grant mania, Jeffrey Goldsworthy 17  \nA U S T R A L I A N U N I V E R S I T I E S ’ R E V I E W  \nthe conduct of scholarship in other disciplines within the humanities.  \nThe situation today is very different. Faculties and departments, including law schools, now apply considerable pressure to their scholars to apply for research funding, because university managements apply the same pressure to them. Universities set ‘targets’ for the amounts ","cbCaivKVazOeDMOI","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaivKVazOeDMOI","pdf",147531,"English","# Research grant mania\n## Commonwealth funding formula impacts\n## Negative effects on disciplines\n## Past vs. current research funding pressure\n## Systemic drivers and evaluation criteria","[{\"question\":\"What is the main claim behind “Research grant mania”?\",\"answer\":\"External research funding—especially competitive ARC grants—has become an excessive and distortive criterion for evaluating research performance in Australian universities.\"},{\"question\":\"Why does the text criticize using grant success to judge research quality?\",\"answer\":\"It argues the method is inaccurate and shifts attention from research outputs like publications toward inputs and income metrics.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the document describe earlier research culture compared with today?\",\"answer\":\"Earlier, scholars typically did not rely heavily on external grants and instead depended on institutional resources like libraries, well-equipped offices, conferences, and sabbatical time.\"}]","Research grant mania - Jeffrey Goldsworthy Faculty of Law, Monash University | PDF",1792081046]