The ARC’s overarching aim in supporting international research collaboration is to maximise Australia’s contribution to and benefits from international research collaborations, partnerships, developments and policy.

Supporting international collaboration through ERA

One of the ARC's guiding principles is a commitment to engagement with government, universities, research agencies, business and the wider community nationally and internationally. The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) program is linked to this engagement.

A key objective of ERA is to allow for comparisons of Australia's research nationally and internationally across all discipline areas within higher education institutions. ERA provides assurance to the international community about research excellence within Australia's higher education providers and details areas within institutions and disciplines that are internationally competitive, as well as highlighting emerging areas where there are opportunities for further investment and international collaboration.

International parties can consult ERA results to help guide research investment into the future and to increase confidence that their decisions are based on a transparent assessment of research quality within Australia. ERA will help to achieve the Government's vision of boosting international research collaboration within Australia.

More information about the ERA initiative can be found on the ARC ERA [1] page.

Funding collaboration through NCGP grants

The ARC is committed to creating and enhancing international research collaboration opportunities under the NCGP. Under current arrangements, support for international research collaboration is incorporated within each of the funding schemes of the NCGP. More information on international funding opportunities can be found on the Information for International Researchers page [2].

International Research Collaboration in recent years

Since the inception of the NCGP, the ARC has actively supported international research collaboration through its various schemes. The information below provides insight into ARC’s support of international research collaborations, including overall statistics from the commencement of the NCGP, and more recent examples of scheme-specific collaborations.

In referring to instances of collaboration, the ARC draws from information collected at the application stage–where researchers are asked to indicate an intention to collaborate with other countries. As ARC schemes allow collaborations with multiple countries on a single project, where the data provided refers to ‘Instances of international research collaboration’ figures must not be summed.

For more detailed statistics on funding outcomes please visit the Grants Dataset [3].

Table 1. Number of new and ongoing projects with international research collaborations on ARC-funded research projects since 2011, by funding allocation year 

*The data provided in this table refers to the top 25 countries of research collaboration on new and ongoing ARC funded projects.

**The data in this table refers to instances of collaboration and represents all new and ongoing projects that have a funding allocation in a given year. Some projects involve collaboration with more than one country and therefore are represented more than once in these figures.

***The table does not include projects that may have been funded under the Special Research Initiatives scheme and the Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects scheme.

****The information shown is limited to that which was current at the time research proposals were approved for funding and accordingly excludes any post-award variations that may subsequently have been approved.

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For funding commencing in 2016, the ARC approved 320 proposals for funding with a funding allocation of over $115.3 million (over the life of these projects).

Table 2. Comparison of total proposal numbers, proposal numbers involving instances of international research collaborations, Linkage Projects from 2010 to 2016 

*Please note that in 2010, 2011 and 2012 two Linkage Projects selection rounds were held per year. For the purposes of this data analysis, data collected have been combined for both selection rounds per year.