Doctoral programme grant within register-based research

Focus: Register-based research

Applicant: Organisation (Swedish higher education institution (HEI) with degree-awarding powers at third cycle higher education level). A coordinator of the graduate school at the host organisation shall be invited to be the project leader for the application.

Participating researchers: A minimum of two further HEIs shall participate in the application. One contact person per participating HEI shall be invited as a participating researcher.

Grant period: 4 years

Grant amount: Maximum 2 500 000 SEK per year

Start of grant period: January 2025

Application period: 21 August 2024 (14.00/2 p.m.) – 17 September 2024 (14.00/2 pm)

Publication of grant award: No later than the end of December

Framework for the graduate school

The graduate school shall:

• be linked to an HEI with main and coordinating responsibility
• be operated by at least three Swedish HEIs in cooperation
• be close to well-functioning research environment/s with international connections
• offer a structured range of programmes, with joint courses and seminars of high scientific and educational quality, which have to be available nationally and preferably internationally
• have a clear organisation and leadership, including a board or governing body with overarching responsibility for quality assurance of the graduate school’s activities in collaboration with the participating departments
• have a sufficient national supply of doctoral students.

The above are general requirements that the graduate school must fulfil to receive a grant from the Swedish Research Council. Depending on differing needs and preconditions, a graduate school may then be designed in various ways, but it should

• offer relevant education of high scientific and educational quality that is not otherwise included in the HEIs’ ordinary doctoral programmes
• include both theoretical and practical elements relevant to register-based research
• offer doctoral students in register-based research opportunities to develop general skills and knowledge that are necessary for research
• educate doctoral students in good data management of relevance for register-based research and in the central guidelines for open access to research data, including the FAIR principles
• disseminate information on and enable doctoral students to participate in courses of relevance for register-based research outside the graduate school’s programme
• give doctoral students the opportunity to present and discuss their own research
• provide an international outlook (for example how register-based data can be used in international collaborations)
• enable networking between junior researchers from different scientific disciplines.

Focus

The initiative aims to strengthen and develop interdisciplinary and intersectoral research that is based wholly or partly on micro-data from public agency or quality registers for example (data collected primarily for purposes other than research) that can be linked to data from other sources, such as researcher-generated data, biobank data, or survey data. In this context, interdisciplinary and intersectoral research refers to researchers with genuinely differing scientific background working together to investigate and solve research problems.

The support for a graduate school aims to develop knowledge of how register-based research is conducted in Sweden, and to educate a new generation of researchers in interdisciplinary and intersectoral register-based research. At the same time, junior researchers are taught about new methods in this field, as well as good data management, including the FAIR principles, open access to research data and research software through the funding of the graduate school.

The graduate school is expected to stimulate and contribute to internationalisation of register-based research by developing knowledge about register-based research abroad, establishing networks between junior researchers, and by collaborating with international researchers and research institutions.

The graduate school shall have a national catchment area and offer education relevant to all research fields that use register-based data in their research.