Which question do you want to address?

Formas review and synthesize research studies to support the Swedish environmental objectives External link.. To ensure that our evidence syntheses are useful, we invite you to suggest questions or topics where you need more information to make wise environmental decisions.

We create evidence syntheses in form of systematic reviews, which contain conclusions about what the aggregated research says about a question. If the question is broad, we will instead create a systematic map. Systematic maps describe the available research about a topic and identify knowledge gaps.

It takes us roughly two years to complete a systematic review or systematic map. Questions that require a quick response are therefore not suitable for such a review or map.

We mainly address questions that concern a certain effect that an action or impact has on some factor in the environment. For example: How effective are constructed wetlands in retaining nitrogen and phosphorus? How is mountain vegetation affected by reindeer foraging?

We aim to ensure that the evidence syntheses are as objective and transparent as possible, to minimize the risk of distorted results. Therefore, we follow the international guidelines for environmental evidence syntheses established by the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence (CEE) External link.. This means that we conduct a highly comprehensive literature search to find all the studies that can help answer the question. We also assess the relevance of the studies and the reliability of the results.

Updated:12 August 2020
Page manager: Erik Eriksson