“Academic housekeeping” steals time from research, and does not add merit. Academic housekeeping is the invisible work primarily carried out by women.

Men continue to dominate the top level of academia, a report from the AllBright Foundation shows. At technical universities in particular, women are heavily under-represented. At Chalmers University of Technology, more than 80 per cent of the professors are men. The university is now investing 300 million SEK over ten years, to increase the percentage of women and to change the culture in the long term.

What is the position of basic research in Sweden, and what does basic research really mean? Curie has talked to Karin Markides, Mats Ulfendahl and Göran Blomqvist. All three have experience of research funding from leading positions within bodies such as Vinnova, the Swedish Research Council and the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.

Working with basic research tests your patience – it can take decades to achieve tangible results. This is well-known to the microbiologists Jan Holmgren and Ann-Mari Svennerholm, who have been researching cholera vaccine since the 1970s. Today, the couple have received many accolades for their work spanning many years.

The importance of undirected research for social development and the need to invest more in national infrastructure. These were some of the issues highlighted in the Swedish Research Council’s report Future choices, which shows the way forward for Swedish research.

Basic research is about finding new knowledge, but the concept has several definitions, and the approach differs between different scientific fields. Mats Benner, professor of research policy, explains what basic research is, and why so few researchers stretch their wings these days.