Research News

Facilitating Academic Promotion

Closing Date: Monday 8 March

All academic staff at MGSE are invited to complete a short online survey about your perceptions of factors that can facilitate or hinder academic promotion.

Academic resilience in times of adversity

Closing Date: Friday 30 April 

You are invited to participate in a short online survey to identify one strategy that has helped you manage your academic work during COVID-19.

Contact Marian Mahat for any queries.

Following a review of the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC), new Field of Research and Socio-Economic Objective research classification code lists were released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on 30 June 2020 replacing the 2008 codes.
More information about the ANZSRC and changes between the ANZSRC versions 2008 and 2020 is available on the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) website.

The University of Melbourne launched an initiative in 2020 to deliver updates to our key systems to reflect the changes. All codes in key systems including StudentOne, the Thesis Examination System, Themis, Minerva Access and Minerva Elements will be updated to the new codes with minimum impact to our researchers.

It is expected that for the majority of staff and student researchers, there will be no action required. By the end of Q1 student systems will be updated followed by all other systems by June 2021. During this transition, students and staff may see both the 2008 and 2020 codes being used in different systems. After the changes have been implemented, we will advise students and staff how the allocated codes can be changed, and in which system, if they prefer another categorisation.

For more detailed information about our approach, please refer to the New FoR/SEO codes update project page.

Contact Jason Rutgers, Senior Change and Communications Manager, for further details.

The Infonetics Ethics Review Manager (ERM) is now fully operational for researchers to apply to conduct studies involving humans.

Ethics support contacts

Infonetica technical support

• ServiceNow webform (staff-only)
• Research helpline: (03) 8344 0999

General human ethics support

• General information can be found on the Human Ethics website.
• General queries can be emailed to the Human Ethics Enquiries team.

Human Research Ethics Committees (HREC)

• General information, including meeting dates and committee membership, can be found on the HREC page.
• For information regarding a specific HREC, please contact the Research Ethics Officer assigned to that committee, found under the Committee Membership of the HREC website.
• HREC queries can be emailed to the Human Ethics Enquiries team.

Apply for ethics approval

• To apply for ethics approval, please visit the step-by-step guide.

Complaints or concerns

• Any complaints or concerns about the conduct of a research project should be emailed to the Research Integrity Administrator. You can also call on (03) 8344 1376.

The ‘Program application (student coursework)’ application type has been developed for coursework student projects that are time-sensitive and do not deviate significantly from well-defined parameters. This replaces the previous Project Within Program (PwP) application type, which is no longer available.

For the student coursework application type, a project supervisor submits an overarching application for a project with well-prescribed parameters and retains responsibility for overseeing student projects that sit beneath it. In this way, the overarching application follows the regular pre-review/review pathway, but individual student projects are not required to undergo separate research ethics review by a committee (they must complete the student report template instead, to be reviewed and retained by the project supervisor who remains responsible for the projects). Note that if the student’s project does fall outside of the parameters of the overarching application, they are required to submit a regular application that follows the regular pre-review/review pathway.

What happens next:

• New ‘Program application (student coursework) ’ applications can be created in the usual way - by logging into Infonetica and creating a new application, which will undergo REA pre-review and then committee review. If your researchers are intending to use this application type for student coursework in Semester 1, they will need to submit an application as soon as possible as we are unable to fast-track applications.
• For existing PwP applications, further student projects can not be added. A new application should be submitted, and the projects to sit beneath should be managed following the new simplified process. If it helps, your researchers can duplicate the previous PwP application in Infonetica, make the changes required and submit this as a new ‘Program application (student coursework)’.

Login to the Infonetica system

Please contact HumanEthics-Enquiries@unimelb.edu.au for further information or advice.

All research and evaluation activity involving Victorian government schools and Victorian early childhood services requires approval through the Department of Education and Training’s (DET’s) Research in Schools and Early Childhood settings (RISEC) process.

A phased resumption of the Research in Schools and Early Childhood settings (RISEC) process will commence in early 2021, subject to public health advice and operational guidance about external visitors to education settings.

Research activity involving education settings may resume in Term 1, 2021 for research commissioned, partnered, or supported by DET or other Victorian government departments. This research must meet the following conditions:

• that data have been provided to us about the anticipated time burden on education settings (further advice will be emailed to existing RISEC approval holders)
• we have subsequently confirmed that the research may proceed
• researchers may not contact schools or early childhood sites or participants until Week 3, Term 1 (week commencing 8 February 2021).

DET will accept new RISEC applications, or requests to amend existing RISEC approvals, meeting the above requirements from the week commencing Monday 25 January 2021.

The Department will provide advice regarding the resumption of RISEC for remaining research activity in Term 1, 2021. This webpage will be updated once further information becomes available.

Any queries may be directed to the Strategic Research Team at research@education.vic.gov.au

For more information visit the Conduct research page on the Education and Training website.

CEM is still accepting applications to conduct research in CEM schools and these applications will be subjected to the usual review process. However, even if approved, researchers are not yet permitted to approach schools until they are given written permission by CEM. All approvals at the moment are ‘conditional’. Some projects have been exempt from this current ban on approaching schools (e.g. research that has been instigated by a school not an external researcher, or research that had already begun pre-COVID), but this is considered by CEM.

The University of Melbourne has a central Staff Travel and Off Campus Work page which is continuously updated with advice to be considered by anyone travelling on University business. Please see the following page (access requires a UoM username and password).