Promising junior researchers given different preconditions for career development

In a new report, we have followed up how the Swedish Research Council’s grants are used by junior researchers: to what extent grants are used to fund salary costs, and what impact this has on the researchers’ career development, working conditions, and opportunities to gain merit.

The report “Externa forskningsmedel och attraktiva anställningar” (“External research funding and attractive employment”) shows that grants from the Swedish Research Council are important for funding researchers’ salaries, both the project leaders’ own salaries and salaries to other researchers and doctoral students. The grant terms and conditions make it possible for junior researchers to use them in the way that provides the greatest benefit for their opportunities to gain merit and develop their careers. Researchers in medicine and health and in natural and engineering sciences, for example, use the grant to build up their own research teams, which is important in these fields if you want a career in academia.

The report also shows that junior researchers who have been awarded grants from the Swedish Research Council are employed in career development positions to a greater extent than junior researchers whose applications have been rejected. They are also more likely to be employed as professors later on in their careers. This indicates that higher education institutions create good conditions for career development for some of the best researchers.

Joint responsibility necessary to make research careers attractive

But the report also shows that a high proportion of those awarded grants from the Swedish Research Council have temporary employment as researchers even at higher career ages.

“So, even if the higher education institutions create good preconditions for some of their promising junior researchers, there are at the same time many who are at risk of getting stuck in temporary researcher employment, with less opportunities for career development,” says Kristina Tegler Jerselius, analyst at the Swedish Research Council.

This risks making research careers less attractive, and creating negative effects on the quality of research conducted at Swedish higher education institutions, she considers.

“The report makes it clear that we need increased dialogue between higher education institutions and research funding bodies on how the preconditions for the best researchers to conduct research can be improved. This is necessary to make research careers attractive, so that higher education institutions can recruit and also retain attractive researchers, who can build up excellent, creative environments for ground-breaking research in Sweden,” says Katarina Bjelke, Director General of the Swedish Research Council.

The report functions as background documentation for the discussion of how the preconditions for the best researchers to conduct research can be improved, and what the allocation of roles between research funding bodies and research conductors should be in relation to responsibility for and funding of researchers’ employment.

Read the report: Externa forskningsmedel och attraktiva anställningar – villkor för unga forskare med finansiering från Vetenskapsrådet