ARC and NHMRC

The Australian Research Council funds research across disciplines other than clinical medicine and public health; the National Health and Medical Research Council funds health and medical research. Between them they account for most competitive academic research funding in Australia.

Both run to a published annual calendar, with schemes opening and closing at broadly the same time each year. That predictability is unlike the business-facing programmes on business.gov.au, and it means an Australian academic can plan a year ahead in a way that a company cannot.

The ARC's schemes divide roughly between investigator-led discovery research and collaborative work linking universities with partner organisations, where the partner contributes cash or in-kind support. The NHMRC's schemes are organised around people and ideas separately: funding an investigator's programme of work, or funding a specific research idea.

Both require an Australian administering institution. The grant is held by the university or medical research institute rather than by the researcher personally, and eligibility rules about employment and time commitment follow from that.

NHMRC-funded work also carries Australia's research ethics framework, which is enforced through institutional human research ethics committees. Approval is an institutional process with its own timetable, and it must be planned into the project rather than treated as a formality after the award.