Sweden invests heavily in research – but its impact factor is not increasing

The Swedish Research Barometer 2025 from the Swedish Research Council provides a picture of how Swedish research and development (R&D) overall compares internationally.

Among the Swedish universities, Uppsala University is top ranked when it comes to the scope of its research activities. What are termed the broad established universities – Uppsala, Lund, Gothenburg, Linköping, Stockholm and Umeå – together account for just over half of all R&D funding in the higher education sector.

Here are some of the more important findings in the report:

• Sweden has one of the world’s most research-intensive economies, with 3.6 per cent of GDP going to research and development in 2023. Only Israel and South Korea are investing more.
• The business sector is behind the majority of Sweden’s R&D efforts. Universities’ research budgets, on the other hand, are being affected by reduced purchasing power and unchanged direct government funding.
• Private foundations are becoming increasingly important as funding bodies for research.
• Sweden has the third highest number of researchers per capita in the OECD and that number increased during the analysis period, particularly in the higher education sector.
• Sweden ranks sixth in the OECD in terms of number of publications per capita.
• The number of publications that are frequently cited dated has increased sharply during the 2000s, but the proportion has remained relatively stable. Sweden only ranks in 11th place when the impact factor is measured, which is a measure of the frequency of citation. The Swedish Research Council concludes in its report that while Sweden’s R&D efforts are resulting in more publications and more researchers, their relative impact is not increasing.

Anders Berndt