ARC Linkage Project

A grant awarded under the Australian Research Council's Linkage Program that funds collaborative research between a university-based team and at least one external Partner Organisation (industry, government, or community body), where the Partner Organisation(s) must contribute cash and/or in-kind resources whose combined value at least matches the funding requested from the ARC, with cash alone required to be at least 25% of the ARC request.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 18 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

A university and a mining company partner on a materials-science project; the company contributes cash plus equipment access as its Partner Organisation contribution.

Is an instance

A university and a state health department partner on a health-services research project, with the department contributing staff time and de-identified administrative data as in-kind support alongside a cash contribution.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

A single-investigator project with no external organisation involved is not eligible as a Linkage Project -- it would instead be considered under Discovery Projects.

Not an instance

An informal letter of support from a company with no committed cash or in-kind value attached does not satisfy the Partner Organisation contribution requirement.

An ARC Linkage Project is a competitively awarded grant under the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Linkage Program, within the ARC’s National Competitive Grants Program (NCGP). Unlike an ARC Discovery Project, which is investigator-driven and open to any research topic, a Linkage Project is defined by a mandatory partnership: it funds collaborative research between a university-based research team and one or more external Partner Organisations — industry, government, or community bodies — who contribute cash and/or in-kind resources to the project.

What makes a grant an ARC Linkage Project

The defining feature is the required Partner Organisation. An application for Linkage Projects funding must name at least one Partner Organisation, and that organisation must make a documented contribution — in cash, in kind, or a combination of both — to the project. This is a structural requirement, not an optional strengthening of the application: without an eligible, contributing Partner Organisation, a project is not fundable under this scheme.

Partner contribution requirements

Per the ARC’s published Linkage Projects Grant Guidelines, the combined cash and in-kind contributions from Partner Organisations must at least match the total amount of funding requested from the ARC. Within that combined contribution, a minimum cash component applies: the cash contribution alone must be at least 25% of the amount requested from the ARC, with the remaining matched value able to be made up of in-kind support (for example, staff time, equipment access, data, or facilities). A research office assessing a proposed Linkage Project therefore needs to confirm two things before submission: that total partner contributions (cash + in-kind) meet or exceed the ARC request, and that cash contributions alone clear the 25% floor.

Funding and duration

Linkage Projects are funded at between roughly $50,000 and $300,000 per year from the ARC, for a project duration of two to five years. As with Discovery Projects, administration runs through the ARC’s own Research Management System (RMS). Because scheme parameters are set out in each round’s Grant Guidelines and can be revised, exact funding bands and cash-match percentages should be confirmed against the current Linkage Projects Grant Guidelines on arc.gov.au before an application is prepared.

How it differs from an ARC Discovery Project

The two schemes sit in different programs within the same NCGP and answer different questions:

ARC Discovery Project — open, curiosity- or strategy-driven research; no external partner required; no career-stage restriction on investigators; sits in the Discovery Program alongside DECRA, the ARC Future Fellowship, and the Australian Laureate Fellowships.
ARC Linkage Project — partnership-driven research; requires at least one contributing Partner Organisation with a matched cash/in-kind commitment; sits in the Linkage Program alongside ARC Centres of Excellence, the Industrial Transformation Research Program, and Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) grants.

In practice, a research office chooses between the two based on whether the project already has (or can secure) a genuine external partner willing to co-invest, and whether the research question is meant to be shaped in collaboration with that partner’s needs, versus being an investigator-defined program of basic or applied research with no partnership obligation.

Illustrative example

The following is an illustrative composite, not a real funded project. A university engineering department and a state government transport agency co-design a research question around sensor-based infrastructure monitoring. The transport agency, as Partner Organisation, commits $40,000 in cash and provides in-kind access to its monitoring network and engineering staff time valued at $90,000 over the project. The university team requests $130,000/year from the ARC over three years ($390,000 total). Total partner contribution ($130,000 combined, matching the $130,000/year single-year request in this simplified illustration) and the cash share (well above 25% of the ARC request) would need to be checked against the actual round’s request total before submission — this is the kind of arithmetic a research office verifies before lodging the application, not a rule of thumb to apply loosely.

Counter-example

A university-only research team proposing a project with no external organisation involved, or with an organisation providing only informal, undocumented support (a verbal offer of “access if needed,” with no committed cash or in-kind value attached), does not meet the Linkage Projects requirement. That project would need to be pursued as a Discovery Project instead, or the partnership formalised with a documented, valued contribution before a Linkage application could proceed.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

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Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

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