Academy of Finland funding decision: €24m for social sciences and humanities research

The Academy of Finland’s Research Council for Culture and Society today decided to grant Academy Project funding for 53 research projects. The total funding is worth around 24.4 million euros. The funding, primarily granted for four years, will go towards research team salaries, research costs as well as national and international research collaboration.

The Academy Project funding scheme is the most important funding instrument of the Research Council for Culture and Society for promoting the impact and renewal of research. Each year, the Research Council spends about half of its available funds on Academy Projects.

The applications were peer-reviewed by panels of international experts. The panels organised by the Research Council for Culture and Society involved 164 reviewers from all over the world; 48 per cent of them were women.

Professor Anneli Anttonen, Chair of the Research Council for Culture and Society, said: “The panel review report issued on the application as a result of the international peer review process plays a key role in the Research Council’s funding decisions. The primary focus was on the scientific quality of the proposed research plan. We also concentrated on research impact and scientific renewal.”

Funding was granted for research of a wide scope within the Research Council’s domain. In accordance with the principles of open science and research, all publications, data and materials (incl. metadata and methods) produced and used within the research projects will be made widely available for reuse.

As part of an ongoing development process targeting the Academy’s review practices, a model was tested in this call where the review panels both rated and ranked the applications (only those with rating 5 or 6) assigned to them. The Research Council used this information to support its decision-making.

It also stressed the importance of international collaboration and mobility, interdisciplinarity, ethically sustainable research, potential for breakthrough research, and novel multidisciplinary topics and approaches.