Proposal: Two new grants for groundbreaking research

The government has tasked the Swedish Research Council with presenting a proposal for a programme to promote groundbreaking research. We have now drawn up a proposal for two new funding instruments aimed at stimulating groundbreaking research in Sweden.

The idea is that they will complement each other. Both are intended to stimulate bold research approaches with the potential for major scientific breakthroughs, and both will be open to applications in all research areas.

One grant has the working title “Exploratory grant with the possibility of continuation funding” and will give many researchers the opportunity to test their groundbreaking ideas over a short period. In a second stage, a larger continuation grant will be awarded to the projects assessed to have the greatest potential to develop into long-term, groundbreaking research.

The second grant has the working title “Transformative grant”. It will enable excellent researchers who have previously demonstrated risk-taking and innovative thinking to devote a longer period of time to developing a project with high potential for groundbreaking breakthroughs.

– Groundbreaking ideas are often driven by already successful researchers. But the exploratory grant focuses on the research idea, not on merits, and is broadly targeted at researchers at almost all career stages. This means that it may also promote the ideas of younger researchers,” says Karolina Wallenborg Bjelic, Senior research officer at the Swedish Research Council’s Department of Research Funding.

It is also important, she emphasises, that researchers should not have to choose between applying for grants for a potentially groundbreaking high-risk project and maintaining or applying for grants for other projects.

“The ambition is that researchers should to dare to pursue bold ideas without risking their ongoing research or career.

Therefore, they should be able to apply for the Swedish Research Council’s regular calls for research grants in parallel.

“There is no simple answer to how to promote groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs. Only afterwards can one tell if it was successful. At the same time, we see that certain measures seem more promising than others,” says Karolina Wallenborg Bjelic.

The proposal is based on an analysis with input from the research community via the Swedish Research Council's Scientific councils and committees, an open hearing, a seminar in collaboration with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and input from the Young Academy of Sweden.

Exploratory grant with the possibility of a continuation grant

The grant has two stages. In the first stage, a relatively large number of researchers – including those at the beginning of their careers – are given the opportunity to test a new, unconventional and risky hypothesis over a grant period of up to two years. In the next stage, only the researchers with the most promising ideas receive a larger continuation grant.

Transformative grant

The grant targets established researchers who have previously received research grants in highly competitive situations and demonstrated risk-taking and innovative thinking in their research. The grant will enable researchers to, over a longer period and with considerable freedom, develop new, bolder ideas with high potential for groundbreaking breakthroughs.