Evaluation Report Publications of the Academy of Finland 1/11

Recommendations:
1.  Enhance the mobility of PhD students during their PhD studies.
2.  Increase the recruitment of foreign postdoctoral researchers and encourage 
Finnish PhD students to travel abroad.
3.  Increase Finnish participation in EU research programmes.
4.  Increase the number of faculty members with a degree from a different university 
(Finnish or international) than their permanent employer.
2.8  Recommendations to the Academy of Finland
There is an overall satisfaction with the funding provided by the Academy of Finland, 
as it is the only generally available source of funding for basic research. The panel 
supports the competition-based research funding policy currently used by the 
Academy, a strategy that clearly has led to a rather high number of world-leading 
research groups for a country of Finland’s size.
The panel has no indications that the Academy’s evaluation processes do not meet 
high quality standards or ensure that the best project applications are selected for 
funding. However, there seems to be some uncertainty in the research communities 
on the evaluation processes and on whether factors not communicated influence the 
decision processes. In general, the Academy needs to be more open and transparent in 
its handling of applications, evaluations and funding decisions, and all criteria that are 
applied in the evaluation process must be clearly stated in the documents for an open 
call for proposals. Included in this documentation should also be information on at 
what stage in an evaluation procedure certain evaluation criteria are being considered, 
if these differ.
For research projects that involve training of PhD students, the project period 
open for application should match the time required to complete a PhD degree, to 
avoid financial uncertainty during the PhD studies and to reduce the number of 
students not completing their degree due to a lack of funding.
It is important that the Academy of Finland maintain its focus on funding basic 
research at a high international level, and that the majority of its portfolio is kept for 
basic research without the need for industrial collaborations or immediate societal 
relevance.
Considering the importance of securing external funding for maintaining a 
research activity in a research group (since this is in principle not secured by 
university funding in some cases), it is important that newly hired faculty members 
have the opportunity to secure funding for their new research activity. The panel thus 
suggests the establishment of a national, competitive funding opportunity for young 
faculty members, for example modelled on the European Research Council (ERC) 
Starting Grants or the European Science Foundation (ESF) European Young 
Investigator Awards, but at a national level. An alternative or complementary 
approach would be for the Academy to fund ERC Starting Grant applications that 
are recommended for funding but not supported by the ERC due to limited budget 
resources.

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Considering the low level of mobility in many units, both nationally and 
internationally, a time-limited funding instrument for increased international 
collaborative exchanges should be considered. This instrument should not focus on 
funding people, but rather the additional expenses incurred by mobility, and should 
help raise the international awareness of high-quality Finnish chemistry research and 
increase Finnish awareness of relevant international research groups. The goal should 
be to increase Finnish participation in the many available international mobility 
instruments.