Research Policy

Thanks to its independent position and accumulated experience – not least internationally – the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences is well positioned to play an important part in research-political discussion.

Statement by the Academy: Sweden needs bold, creative and pioneering basic research

 The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has delivered a statement to the Ministry of Education and Research ahead of the forthcoming 2012 Research and Innovation Policy Bill. It emphasises that Sweden needs bold, creative and pioneering basic research in order to safeguard the country's future prosperity and tackle the huge global challenges humanity is facing. It is the Academy's view that the government should:

• provide quality assurance for government research appropriations

• ensure long-term coordination of Swedish research policy

• work to strengthen basic research in Europe

• foster academic mobility and the long-term supply of knowledge

• invest in individual creative researchers

• improve infrastructure

• rehabilitate know-how in Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Technology.

 Read the statement 

Committee for Research Structure of the Academy's Class for physics

The European coutries have much less exchange of knowledge between the academic world and the private sector than the US and many other industrialized countries.   The Committee for Research Structure of the Academy's Class for physics has analyzed this problem and proposes a solution in the report Creation and transfer of knowledge - the critical need for closer ties between the academic world and the private sector.

Read the report

The Committee has also produced Analysis of the Swedish engineering and natural sciences research structure in a national perspective. The report focuses on research funding, academic structure and mobility within the research system.

Read the report 

Research Policy Committee 

From 2005 to 2010 the Research Policy Committe was in operation. Its task was to, in a broader social perspective and an independent position, analyse and advise on issues concerning conditions for, and opportunities in, research. Particular attention was paid to the role of research and science in the community. The goal was to identify the need for measures to strengthen Swedish research. The target groups were decision-makers in the whole of the R&D sector, political experts and political representatives in the field of education and research, nationally and regionally.

Areas in focus included the structures and control mechanisms of research and higher education, and matters of research finance. Quality issues were also in focus, as was the internationalisation of the research system.