Evaluation Report Publications of the Academy of Finland 1/11

Recommendations:
1.  Ensure that projects funding PhD students can run for the full four-year PhD 
period (see also section on PhD training).
2.  Increase the time horizons of industry-related research programmes.
3.  Consider the funding of a minimum amount of research time for academic staff 
over the core budget of the units, as well as a minimum funding for consumables, 
without increasing the total number of staff within chemistry in Finland.
2.3  Recruitment
Many of the units evaluated have recruited both temporary and permanent staff 
largely among their own alumni. In a few cases, this strategy has been successful 
thanks to the high quality of the research conducted in the unit and the level of the 
recruited students. In some cases, this in-house recruitment has been driven by a high 
degree of specialisation in the research group, in other cases by the availability and 
use of specialised instrumentations not available at many other sites. Unfortunately, in 
some cases the in-house recruitment appears to have been motivated primarily by a 
need to ensure the continuation of existing activities. In-house recruitment does 
therefore appear to limit the development of many groups, making some of the 
groups strongly dependent on a single professor.
In many interviews, the language requirements (Finnish or Swedish) were suggested 
as a limiting factor in how widely new faculty members could be searched. The panel is 
of the opinion that language should not be a limiting factor. New faculty members can 
easily be utilised for teaching at a higher level (MSc or PhD) until they master Finnish 
or Swedish at a level that allows them to participate in undergraduate teaching. It is 
important that new faculty positions at all levels be announced internationally to ensure 

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the continued success of Finnish chemistry research. In order to make such positions 
attractive also at the lecturer level, a minimum amount of research time and support 
should be guaranteed for these normally highly teaching-dominated positions.
International recruitment at the PhD and postdoctoral level is more varied among 
the evaluated units. In many cases, recruitment at these levels is largely local, but also 
without an apparent driving force for considering international recruitment. The panel 
feels that most research groups would benefit from a more active international 
recruitment policy, and from more actively encouraging Finnish PhD and postdoctoral 
students to travel abroad for extended periods of time. The panel’s concerns about the 
excessive local recruitment of new faculty members would also be mitigated if the 
recruited personnel spent significant time in an international research group.