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ARC Grant Outcomes—Under embargo

ARC Grant Outcomes—Under embargo

The announcement of ARC funding outcomes remains at the discretion of the Minister for Education. Please see the ​​​​ARC Assessment Process page for more information about the cycle of application, assessment, approval and announcement of ARC grants.

Wherever possible, the ARC will issue information about grant outcomes to Administering Organisations in advance of the Minister’s announcement, under embargo.

Administering Organisations are responsible for managing the embargo period and must adhere to the embargo conditions. 

This advice outlines what the embargo process means, the allowable activities during embargo, and how stakeholders may be notified that the embargo has been lifted.

For the ARC’s purposes, an embargo is the prohibition of publicising information provided by the ARC until a certain date or until certain conditions have been met.    

The ARC provides funding outcomes under embargo on the condition that the outcomes will not be publicised (e.g. through media, social media or on individuals’ or Administering Institutions’ websites) until the embargo is lifted.
 
Under the embargo period, Administering Organisations can share outcomes with the research team and partner organisations (where applicable). However, they must also comply with the strict embargo conditions and must not publicise the information until the embargo has been lifted. This includes posting comments regarding outcomes in public domains such as social media forums, websites, journals or newspapers.
 
Failure of any organisation, its staff or researchers to adhere to the embargo will place in jeopardy the advanced release of details for future announcements.

Embargo notification through the Research Management System (RMS)

When outcomes of applications are released by the ARC under embargo, Administering Organisations will be able to access their outcomes through the Research Management System (RMS). Successful and unsuccessful outcomes will be visible in RMS to staff at the Administering Organisation who have the following RMS roles: Research Office Delegate; Research Office EoYR Delegate; Research Office Signatory and Research Office Staff.

As part of the embargo process, relevant Grant Agreements and Offers will also be released in RMS to successful Administering Organisations for acceptance by the Research Office Signatory.

Allowable activities

During the embargo period:

  • Administering Organisations may accept Grant Agreements and Offers in RMS and proceed with planning.  
  • Administering organisations may seek necessary approvals and commence recruitment of staff—if advertisement for positions during the embargo period is essential, this may occur provided it does not include reference to the ARC, reveal or promote ARC grant outcome details prior to official announcement. 
  • Successful applicants may add grants to CVs for review (for example, as part of a new grant application) provided they add the words ‘under embargo’. 
  • The ARC may counter-accept Grant Agreements and Offers in RMS. 
  • Research projects may commence in accordance with the requirements set out in the Grant Agreement. 
  • If approached, Administering Organisations may liaise with the Minister for Education (or Government representative) to arrange announcement of their outcome, and provide input into media releases, provided embargo is maintained until that announcement occurs.  
  • University media teams may also be advised to assist in preparing media announcement material, provided embargo is maintained until that announcement occurs. 

Embargo lifting notification

The Minister may announce the successful outcomes of a grant opportunity progressively, or as a single, complete announcement.

Where successful outcomes are being announced progressively, Administering Organisations and their researchers may commence releasing information publicly about their successful outcome(s) following the Minister’s official public announcement of their outcome. This announcement may occur via media release or other public statement or announcement by the Minister and/or Government representative. 

The ARC will not directly notify Administering  Organisations that embargo has lifted in the case of progressive announcement of individual outcomes—as above, under these circumstances, embargo is considered to be lifted upon public announcement. The ARC will circulate media releases published about all announcements, and these media releases will be published on the ARC website.

Information about unsuccessful outcomes remains under embargo until the Minister has completed all announcements for that grant opportunity. 

When the Minister is announcing all outcomes of a grant opportunity as a single complete announcement, all outcomes remain under embargo until the Minister’s announcement.
 
The ARC will notify Administering Organisations through a Network Message when the embargo has been lifted at the time of full announcement of the grant opportunity. At this time, all successful outcome information will be published on the ARC website. Once this occurs, applicants may share any outcomes publicly. 

Note: Appeals dates will also be published in the Network Message, as the Appeals process will commence once all outcomes of a grant opportunity are publicly announced.

Further information and advice

If you have any queries about ARC’s embargo processes, please contact the ARC’s Communications team (communications@arc.gov.au).

 

 

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