Positive feedback from assessment panels in Q&R24

Panel members in Building 10, Ångström Laboratory. Photo: Karin Thellenberg
On the whole, the Faculty of Science and Technology at Uppsala University received excellent reviews from the international assessment panels in the University’s research evaluation ‘Quality and Renewal 2024’ (Q&R24). The panels’ reports have now been published on the Faculty’s staff portal.
From 1 to 4 October, panel members from all over the world visited the Faculty of Science and Technology as part of Q&R24. It has been seven years since the last evaluation was carried out. Each evaluation aims to improve our knowledge about the University’s conditions for conducting high-qualify research and its research activities. This time, the evaluation focused on two university-wide themes - research infrastructure, and interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity; and research and research environments - within the University’s three disciplinary domains.
During the visit, the seven assessment panels interviewed representatives of departments, research programmes and junior researchers at the Faculty of Science and Technology. A meeting was also held between the panel chairs and the faculty management.

Charlotte Platzer Björkman. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt
Positive words from the panels
Charlotte Platzer Björkman, Vice-Rector for the Disciplinary Domain of Science and Technology gained a very positive impression from the visit and she says it generated a lot of energy.
“The international panellists thought it was a lot of fun and very stimulating to be here and working with our Q&R, even if it involved a lot of work. That felt like affirmation that all the good work we put in here at the Faculty before their visit had been very worthwhile,” she says.
At the final meeting, the panel chairs provided oral feedback to the faculty management and section deans. The strength of our research on the international plane was one of the factors highlighted by the panels right across the Faculty.
“The panel chairs stated that they had seen internationally very strong research in all sections, and that they were greatly impressed by the quality, commitment and excellence of our researchers,” says Charlotte Platzer Björkman.
Strategic renewal highlighted
The discussions also focused on challenges, including how more people can be encouraged to apply for funding from funding bodies such as the European Research Council (ERC). Another point discussed was how the Faculty should work with strategic renewal of its research programmes, such as when new staff are recruited and when people retire. In some quarters, these issues had been escalated to the department level, so that it was not just a matter for the research programme to decide, and this was seen as a positive initiative by the panel members.
In general, they noted that how today’s research programmes are divided up is perhaps suffering from a little too much reference to the past, and that the Faculty would be strengthened by more renewal. Focusing resources and not spreading them too thinly was another recurring comment.
Another observation made by the panels concerned initiatives around AI from several parts of the Faculty.
“Regarding AI, we need to review the needs and challenges that exist across the entire Faculty. The same applies to infrastructure, where we are of course working in parallel with the Faculty’s infrastructure strategy,” says Charlotte Platzer Björkman.
Identifying activities
The panel members included some who had participated in the previous evaluation, Q&R17, and even some who had been involved in Q&R11. According to the Vice-Rector, these panel members were able to see a positive trend overall at the Faculty, and how some of the suggestions for improvement submitted by previous assessment panels had been implemented. On the other hand, in some environments there was still work to be done to achieve a better gender balance.
By the end of October, all assessment panel reports had been received by the faculty management, which also adopted a directive on how these should be handled. With the reports now published on the Faculty’s staff portal pages, the next step is to compare the panels’ reports with the basic data and self-evaluations from the Faculty’s own quality improvement and renewal work. In both the oral and written feedback from the assessment panels, the faculty management was encouraged to identify activities to highlight in the Review of base financing (ÖB24).
“After that, we will have a dialogue with the heads of department to determine whether the feedback from the assessment panels is something that they also think is good to highlight via various channels. The Faculty Board will also be involved in what should be assessed by the Advisory Committee for Research and what should be assessed with the section deans,” says Charlotte Platzer Björkman.

The Biology panel outside the Evolutionary Biology Centre. Photo: Private
An exemplary evaluation process
The theme at the Faculty’s most recent faculty meeting on 29 October was scientific impact. Given the recurring debate in the higher education community about how research should be evaluated, and the importance of indicators and metrics such as numbers of citations and publications, the Q&R process can be seen as exemplary, according to the Vice-Rector.
“In the present evaluation, we’ve had this type of basic data as input, but we’ve also taken in external experts from each scientific field who have reviewed these data. We’ve used indicators in a responsible way, also making use of qualitative peer review,” says Charlotte Platzer Björkman.
What results do you hope to see from the work with Q&R24?
“I hope that in years to come we can look back and conclude that we’ve successfully worked actively with the panels’ suggestions for improvement, without thereby negatively impacting the conditions supporting what is already working well. You can’t do everything, so you need to be able to select and focus. Firstly, you need this view from the outside, which provides input on our strengths and weaknesses and identifies opportunities so that we have as much as possible to build on. But what to focus on – that’s a choice we have to make ourselves.”
Anneli Björkman