Information to those who have been awarded research grants

1 When you have been awarded a research grant - write a project description 

When you have been informed that you have been awarded a research grant, it is time to write a project description. Start the project description with the most important aspect—the purpose of the project. Also, specify how you plan to conduct the research, which data you (potentially) will use, and the time period you will study. 

Include the project participants along with their titles and email addresses. Since the description will be published on IFAU’s website once the project nears completion (see below), it is advisable to write as clearly as possible so that even those unfamiliar with the subject can understand the project. 

The project description should be approximately half an A4 page and must be written in Swedish. Please use IFAU’s project description template. The completed project description should be sent electronically to ifau@ifau.uu.se. 

2 During the Project – You Will Be Assigned an Editor 

Every project is assigned an editor. Once you have submitted your project description to IFAU, a responsible editor will be appointed for your project. They will contact you, provide the necessary information, and serve as your point of contact throughout the process. Some important things to know include: 

Research Reports and Working Papers (WP) 

• If you have received research funding or data from IFAU, you are generally required to write a research report in Swedish. 

• Typically, the report should not exceed 50 pages using IFAU’s Word template. Research reports in Swedish are published in IFAU’s report series. 

• The target audience for Swedish reports includes not only other researchers but also policymakers, civil servants, the media, and the general public. This means that theoretical and methodological sections should be presented as clearly as possible to ensure accessibility for a broader audience. Mathematical formulas and subject-specific terminology should be avoided. Instead, theory and methodology can be explained in a more popular-science format. 

• Authors often choose to also write a Working paper in English. 

• The goal of a Working Paper is usually to make the results available for publication in an international scientific journal. Working papers are published in IFAU’s WP series. 

• The research report and the Working paper from the same project are published simultaneously. 

• IFAU does not provide policy recommendations in its publications. 
• We aim for a neutral and balanced presentation rather than engaging in direct policy debates. However, we encourage authors to clearly highlight the policy relevance of their findings, particularly in the Swedish research reports. 

If you need data, please contact data@ifau.uu.se. 

3 The work process 

Seminar at IFAU 

All projects that have been awarded research grants are to be presented at a seminar at IFAU. This is part of IFAU’s quality check. The research projects that are presented at the seminars are usually ongoing and the seminars mainly serve as a forum for discussion. The seminar is 1 hour and 15 minutes. 

You book your seminar time slot, after having consulted the project editor, by sending an e-mail to seminarier@ifau.uu.se. This is done about 3—6 months in advance. 

It is not until now, when the project approaches its completion, that the project description will be published on the IFAU website. The communications officer will contact you before the publication and you will then have the possibility to revise your original project description.  

Referee procedure 

When there exists a written final report (report and/or WP), please send this to the project editor. He/she appoints two ”referees” who are given the task of reading, scrutinizing and commenting on the report in writing. This will take about a month. 

• The final report is revised based on the comments from the referees 
  When the comments from the referees have been taken into consideration, the revised version should be sent to the project editor, along with a letter showing how you have incorporated the referees’ views.
• The editor will then conduct her/his main reading of the final report and might give some further views.
• It varies whether and when IFAU decides to publish a study or not.
• IFAU has the right, but is not obliged to, publish all studies that have been funded by our research grants or that have used data from IFAU. We sometimes choose not to publish a study, for example, if we consider that the publication does not fit into the IFAU publication series. Notwithstanding if IFAU publishes the report or not, the author must always give a seminar and submit a final report. 

Final manuscript and printing of Swedish report 

Also write a proposal for the press release/message that summarizes the contents of your report. Please send the proposal to the communication’s officer who will be working on the text with you. 

The report and the press release will be sent electronically to those who subscribe to IFAU’s research and they will also be published at ifau.se and in social media. In certain cases, there is also a longer summary called “The report in brief” (also in Swedish). The communication’s officer will normally write the first draft of the brief. 

4 When the project has been completed 

After the publication at IFAU (or a decision from IFAU not to publish) the author has the right to publish the material in other contexts. Exceptions from the principle of first publishing at IFAU should be approved by the editor in charge. The research is thus normally published at IFAU before any other kind of publication. 

Data material must be filed in the archives 

If the study is based on an analysis of any kind of data material from IFAU, the analyzed data is to be filed in the archives after the publication. Analyzed data is the data on which the conclusions in the report have been made. Also, program code (for example do-files in Stata) is to be filed in the archives. You will find more information in ”Policy for research data” (availble only in Swedish) and ”Instructions for the filing of data in the archives”. 

If you create several programs, please document in which order they are to be used and already from the start, make note of what you are doing in the program. 

More information about data archiving 

Instructions for storing data 

Scientific publications outside IFAU (for example academic journals) 

There is no requirement for studies that have been funded by IFAU’s scientific council to be published in other scientific contexts besides IFAU, but if you as an author have the ambition to do so and the analysis is based on data from IFAU, the project might remain open and the filing in the archives might be done later. In the relevant cases, you and the Director General at IFAU will agree on how long to keep the project open and for analyzed data to be available. 

Other practical information 

Research grants are paid out on a quarterly basis.

The research grant will be paid out in advance on a quarterly basis to the account that has been stated in the application for research grants. In order for everything to run smoothly, it is important that you inform IFAU about possible additional payment references that are needed in the recipient’s payment system. 

Extended time for use of funds 

If, during the project period, you find that there will be a need to extend the project period, you can apply for an extended time for use of funds. Please contact ifau@ifau.uu.se in order to discuss the timeline and the conditions for an extension. 

Swecris 

At the request of the Swedish government, The Swedish Research Council collects information about Swedish research funded by research grants in the database Swecris. The objective of the database is to make public and communicate Swedish research and make it possible to make aggregated statistical analyses. IFAU transfer information about those projects that we have granted from 2008 and onwards. 

More information about Swecris 

ORCID 

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is an international open, non-profit organization which supplies unique identities for researchers, a kind of civic registration number for researchers. 

More information about ORCID