Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering makes first-stage decisions on autumn 2021 call

The decisions on applications submitted in the Academy of Finland’s September 2021 call will be made in two stages in spring 2022. The two-stage decision procedure applies to four funding schemes: Academy Projects, Academy Research Fellows, Postdoctoral Researchers and Clinical Researchers.

The aim of this phased decision-making is to speed up application processing times in cases where the peer review indicates that an application will not be funded.

At the first decision stage in March–April, the Academy’s research councils, at their discretion, will reject applications that have received rating 1–4 in the review. Applications with rating 5–6 continue to the next stage and will be decided later (see table below).

The autumn 2021 call brought with it a reform in the panel review where applicants who receive a rating of 1–4 will be provided with a summary of the review report as feedback on their application. The reform clarifies and harmonises the panel reviews and opinions on applications with ratings 1–4. With regard to final ratings, the reform introduced a four-point review scale in which all applications falling below rating 4 (good) are classified within the 1 to 3 range (fair to insufficient). The goal is to increase the time available to the panels to process the best applications and thus to support decision-making on the most competitive applications.

The first-stage decisions on applications submitted in the Academy of Finland’s September 2021 call will be made in March–April 2022: Culture and Society on 23 March; Biosciences, Health and the Environment on 4 April; and Natural Sciences and Engineering on 7 April. If your application is among those decided in the first stage, you will be notified by email no later than the day following the decision. You can also access the decision notification in the online services (SARA) on the tab ‘My applications’ > ‘Decided’. If your application will be decided in the second stage, it will be shown on the tab ‘My applications’ > ‘In process’.

Decision dates for September 2021 call

The table of decision dates on the Academy’s website shows two dates for each funding opportunity (where phased decision-making is applied): the first and second decision stage. Applicants receive an email notification of the funding decision after either the first or the second stage of decision-making.

Research Council for Biosciences, Health and the Environment

Research Council for Culture and Society

*The Division of Social Sciences and Humanities Research will organise a feedback session on the September call in June 2022.

Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering

The research councils make the funding decisions based on the applications, the review reports, the Academy’s science policy objectives and their own policies. The justifications for the funding decision are included in the decision notification.

Learn more about application review and decision-making

• Review of applications aims at identifying the most promising and excellent research projects
• Diversity of scientific research crucial to securing a broad base of skills and competencies for the future
• Responsibly organised application review creates base for high-quality research funding