Uppsala University welcomes strengthened funding
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The Swedish government has now presented the entire research and innovation bill. Most of the contents have been known for a while, including large investments in life sciences and increased research grants for the universities.
The single largest investment is an increase of the grants for research and research programmes to universities and higher education institutions. The grants are expected to increase by SEK 600 million in 2014 and by another SEK 300 million in 2016. For Uppsala University this entails an addition of SEK 67 million towards research in 2014, an increase of roughly 4 per cent compared to 2013.
‘The stronger financial backing is good and our own research evaluation “Quality and Renewal” gives us a very good basis for making the best prioritisations’, says Eva Åkesson, Vice-Chancellor at Uppsala University.
One piece of news in the research and innovation bill is that the money that is distributed based on quality criteria is increased from 10 to 20 per cent. Today the distribution system is based on citations and amounts of external grants. Now the Swedish Research Council has been given the task of developing a new evaluation system based on peer review where also the benefit of the research can be taken into account.
‘Fundamentally we are positive to peer review, which is the research community’s way of judging quality. Previously we have been sceptical to a national system, but today’s system is also problematic and risks putting broad univerities at a disadvantage, so we will have to have a closer look at how this is intended to work’, says Eva Åkesson.
‘It is difficult to give such a system the precision, uniformity and quality necessary to work as a reliable basis for resource distribution. But it is important to take part and contribute in a constructive way to make this work well’, says Pro-Vice Chancellor Anders Malmberg.
Anneli Waara