Swedish Research Council Research Environemnt Grant Program 2020, Sweden

Type of call

Research environment and collaboration support

Subject area

Humanities and Social Sciences, Medicine and Health

The following requirements must be fulfilled in order for you to be eligible to apply for the grant. We carry out checks to ensure unqualified applications are rejected from further processing.

Focus

The Swedish Research Council is issuing a call for funds to support research in the field of register-based research. The priority area aims to strengthen and develop interdisciplinary and intersectoral research that is based wholly or partly on micro-data from, for example, public authority or quality registers (data collected primarily for purposes other than research) and that can be linked to data from other sources, such as research-generated data, biobank data or survey data. In this context, interdisciplinary and intersectoral research refers to when researchers with genuinely differing scientific backgrounds work together and in parallel to investigate and solve research problems.

In addition to this grant for research environments, we are also issuing a call for grants for a national doctoral programme within register-based research. The priority area is based on a Government mandate from the Government Bill on Research and Innovation 2016.

This call aims to give opportunities for research teams to develop interdisciplinary and intersectoral research environments, where ground-breaking knowledge and methods within register-based research may be expected. The priority area also aims to support strong research environments that efficiently use and contribute to the development of register-based infrastructure.

The call relates to research where theories, methodology, factual knowledge and register-based data from differing disciplines are combined in such ways as open up new research areas and approaches. The research environments receiving the grant are expected to contribute to development of methodology within register-based research, and to improved and increased use of register-based data in interdisciplinary research. The environments are also expected to contribute by inspiring and educating junior researchers in the use of register-based data in their research. Furthermore, the research environments are expected to work for long-term development of competence by recruiting both leading researchers and doctoral students from Sweden and abroad, and by collaborating actively with foreign research institutions.

The research environments are encouraged to include new groupings with participants from several HEIs and international collaborators, as well as participation by junior researchers and gender-equality among the participating researchers. The added value of the research environment and the scientific collaboration should be described so that these aspects are clearly shown in the application.

Applicant

The applicant must be an individual researcher representing the larger researcher constellation. You shall be the project leader and have scientific responsibility for the research environment. You must set aside adequate time for the project throughout the grant period, with a scope (activity level) that corresponds to at least 20 per cent of a full-time equivalent. You must hold a Swedish doctoral degree or a corresponding foreign degree, awarded no later than the deadline for this call. The degree award date we use is the date you fulfilled all the requirements for a doctoral degree, such as mandatory courses, oral defence and an approved doctoral thesis. For applicants with Swedish doctoral degrees, the award date listed in Ladok applies.

Grants from the Swedish Research Council shall be administered by a Swedish university or HEI or another Swedish public organisation that fulfils our criteria for administrating organisations. Your organisation must therefore be approved as an administrating organisation for you to apply.

If you are awarded a grant, you must be employed by the administrating organisation at the start of and throughout the grant period and any additional availability period, unless the Swedish Research Council approves an exception. The employment must equal at least 20 per cent of a full-time equivalent. You do not have to be employed by the administrating organisation at the time of applying.

Number of applications and previous grants

The requirements described in this section only apply to applicants (project leaders).

What grants may I apply for simultaneously from the Swedish Research Council?

Research environment grant and research project grant

You may apply for this grant at the same time as you apply for a project grant, but if your application for the project grant forms part of this grant application, this fact will be considered during the overall weighted assessment of the resource requirement.

Number of applications for a research environment grant

You may only submit one application, that is be the applicant, for a research environment grant under this call. There is no limitation on being included as a participating researcher in several applications under the call.

You may not apply for a research environment grant under any other of the Swedish Research Council’s calls, but you may be included as a participating researcher in such applications.

Other restrictions on the grants you may apply for during the same year are shown in the table below.

Costs and grant amounts

The grant may be used to fund all types of project-related costs, such as

• salaries (including your own salary, however no more than corresponding to your activity level in the project)
• premises
• running costs (such as consumables, travel including stays at research facilities, publication costs and minor equipment)
• depreciation costs.

Grants may not be used for scholarships. If a doctoral student participates, project funds may not be paid out as salary for the period when the doctoral student is teaching.

The amount you may apply for is 3–4 million SEK per year, including indirect costs.

Grant period

The grant period is four years, starting in January 2020. The first payment will be made no earlier than October 2019.

No later than 1 January 2022, the project leader shall submit a report to the Swedish Research Council that focuses on the collaboration between the participating researchers and the added value from the research environment, as well as on how the research fulfils the required focus on interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration within register-based research between researchers with genuinely differing scientific backgrounds.

Evaluation criteria and guiding questions

The evaluation of the scientific quality of your application is made based on four basic criteria (Novelty and originality, Scientific quality of the project, Merits of the applicant, Feasibility). The purpose of using several components is to achieve a multi-faceted evaluation. The criteria are assessed on a seven-grade scale, except for feasibility, which is assessed on a three-grade grade scale.

In addition to the basic criteria, your application is also evaluated using the additional criterion Added value on a seven-grade scale. For research environment grants, the scores for Novelty and originality and Added value are given a greater weight in the overall grade.

For each criterion, there are guiding questions to support the panel members’ evaluation of your application. These can also function as guidance for you when you write your application.