vetenskapsrådets kartläggning, utvärdering och rekommendationer ...

2 KARTLÄGGNING OCH UTVÄRDERING AV SVENSK VÅRDFORSKNING – HUVUDRAPPORT OCH UNDERLAG FÖR VETENSKAPSRÅDETS REKOMMENDATIONER
ded. A nationally agreed template for completion may be one approach
to ensure consistency. The panel also realised that the self-evaluation was
a challenge to those large institutions where there were large numbers
of research projects and a variety of topics. In contrast, some small university
colleges were able to produce a more coherent report due to their
more modest research activities and smaller cohort of researchers.
Staffing Issues
• Many of the senior staff are over sixty years of age and in many instances
there were more staff over fifty years of age than there were below fifty.
While this may be understandable due to the desire among care science staff
to gain some years of clinical experience and/or raise a family, it does raise
issues of sustainability and succession planning. The panel suggests that this
should be addressed through support for early career researchers, research
masters courses, short courses on research skills, clinical-academic career
pathways and joint appointments between academic and clinical practice.
• In many universities, there appeared to be a gender imbalance. While the
panel recognised that most of the caring science academic staff are female,
there was a disproportionate number of male professors.
• The panel detected that some research staff had heavy administration
and teaching loads. While this is understandable in this field, there should
be some ’protected time’ for active researchers to get relief from nonresearch
activities.
Research Collaborations and Partnerships
• The panel were impressed with many of the ongoing research collaborations
and networks but most of these tended to be at regional and/or national
level. There was less evidence of meaningful and focused collaborations
internationally. Where this was the case, it was not always possible to see
the results of these collaborations in the form of joint publications, grant
applications and conference presentations. Some universities had strong
collaborations and partnerships with their local health services, councils,
municipalities, charities, business and service user organisations. Such collaborations
were perceived positively by the panel but were not common.
• It was disappointing for the panel to note that while several different
universities across Sweden were undertaking research in identical areas,
there was no obvious collaboration or sharing of ideas, methodologies
or research instruments. To address this, there should be collaboration
among centres on specific topics. One way of approaching this is through
the establishment of network ’hubs’ in centres of excellence with ’spokes’
linking such centres to research groups in other institutions that are un-
VETENSKAPSRÅDETS KARTLÄGGNING, UTVÄRDERING OCH REKOMMENDATIONER ANGÅENDE SVENSK VÅRDFORSKNING 25