Academy of Finland compiles statistics on autumn 2021 call

The Academy of Finland’s research councils distributed nearly 165 million euros in funding across their respective scientific disciplines in the autumn 2021 call. The overall application success rate was 14 per cent. The funding corresponds to just over 40 per cent of the annual budget authority allocated to the Academy in the central government budget. In addition to scientific renewal and the scientific and societal impact of research, the funding decisions were made with an emphasis on multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral cooperation.

In the autumn 2021 call, besides a list of publications, applicants were invited for the first time to also list their ten most important other research outputs. In line with the Academy’s guidelines on responsible researcher evaluation, the aim of the reform is to place greater emphasis on qualitative evaluation rather than publication and citation metrics.

The Academy’s funding decisions are based on scientific peer review. In the case of applications of equal merit, however, the research councils give priority, for example, to applicants in the minority gender. This is line with the Academy’s policies on equality and nondiscrimination.

In the 2021 round, women accounted for 40% of the grantees and 39% of the applicants. International applicants accounted for 29% of the grantees and for 30% of all applicants in the autumn 2021 call. In the case of Academy Project funding, the proportion of international applicants and grantees was below 20%, while as many as half of the applicants and grantees in Postdoctoral Researcher funding were international researchers.

In the future, the Academy will pay even more attention to the diversity of funding recipients.