How the 2024 funding year turned out

86 per cent of the Swedish Research Council’s funding went to undirected project grants this year, that is, research projects where the researchers themselves have formulated the research questions and developed methods for answering these.

“Most of the funding by far that we have awarded goes to undirected researcher-initiated research. For project grants, this proportion is as high as 95 per cent,” says Lucas Pettersson, Head of the Department of Research Funding.

In several areas, we have received more applications than usual, he establishes.

“There may be several reasons for this, but what we can see is that this has affected the success rates, which have been a bit lower. This means that many very strong project applications could not be funded.”

The review panels that reviewed applications this year received clarifying instructions when it came to the assessment of merits: The important factor is that the researchers have the merits required for the individual research project in question. At the same time, we have made it easier for applicants to highlight how their merits confirm their competence to implement the specific research project that they are applying for funding for.

In addition to research grants, the Swedish Research Council has funded research infrastructure to the sum of around 2.81 billion SEK. The funding has gone to national infrastructures and to memberships of international research infrastructure.