Knowledge-building Project for Industry

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant actors from trade and industry and any potential partners from other sectors.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner
The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the grant application must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.  

Requirements relating to the project manager
The project manager’s scientific expertise and capability to manage the project will be assessed by peer reviewers. There are no formal requirements for the project manager’s qualifications. The roles of project manager and project administrator in the project may not be filled by the same individual.

Please note that you can only be the project manager for one application submitted for either a Knowledge-building Project for Industry (this call), a Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges, a Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal, a Researcher Project for Young Research Talents or a Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility with an application deadline of either 10 or 17 February 2021.

Requirements relating to partners

• Projects are to be carried out by one or more research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant actors from Norwegian trade and industry and any potential partners from other sectors.
• The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners.
• All project partners are required to take active part in planning and following up the project as well as in disseminating project results and promoting the utilisation of new knowledge.
• The project must involve at least two Norwegian funding partners that are not research organisations.
• The project proposal must describe how the knowledge developed under the project will be of benefit to wider user groups. The project must not involve contract research carried out for individual companies.
• Projects are to have a steering committee or reference group comprising representatives of the project partners.
• The combined cash contribution from Norwegian undertakings forms the basis for the maximum amount of funding that the Research Council can provide for the project. Partners from outside Norway may participate as partners in the project and may contribute cash financing, but this will not be calculated as part of the overall required cash financing.

A project participant may not be assigned more than one role in the project. This means that a partner in the project may not have the role of Project Owner or sub-contractor in the same project.

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.

• The amount of funding awarded by the Research Council may not exceed a maximum of four times the total cash contribution from the Norwegian undertakings.
• The minimum amount of funding that may be sought is NOK 4 million. Please note that the Research Council does not award state aid to companies under this call for proposals. More information about this is provided below.
• Applicants may seek funding to cover the research institutions’ actual costs that are necessary to carry out the project.
• Costs to be incurred by project partners from the business sector must be specified and explained in the project description (section 3.2). These costs are not to be entered in the budget. This applies for Norwegian and international partners alike.
• If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are concrete plans in place for research stays abroad for the fellowship-holders, funding for these stays may be included in the grant application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may seek funding under that call if plans for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated with the project emerge later in the project period. Read more about this scheme here.

Conditions for funding
The Research Council will not award support that constitutes state aid under this call.

The Research Council funding is only to go to the non-economic activity of the research organisations in the form of independent research. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Companies will not be eligible to receive support to cover projects costs and may not receive indirect support by being given rights to project results under favourable terms.

The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration, as defined in the state aid rules.

If the project is awarded funding, the Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreements with all of the Norwegian and international partners in the project. The collaboration agreement is to regulate the reciprocal rights and obligations of the Project Owner and partners in the project and ensure the integrity and independence of the research. It is also to ensure that no participating undertaking receives indirect state aid from a research organisation serving as Project Owner or partner. The agreement must therefore include conditions for the collaboration which ensure compliance with paragraph 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority’s guidelines for state aid for research and development and innovation.

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects. Projects awarded funding under this call are required to submit an annual project account report documenting incurred project costs and their financing.

The Project Owner (company/research organisation) is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. The Project Owner must specify the planned solution(s) in connection with the revised grant proposal.

Research results are to be made accessible through sharing and publication in line with the Research Council’s Policy on Open Science.

Applications must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

• The grant application, including all attachments, must be submitted in English. 
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• The project description must be written using the designated template found at the bottom of this page.
• Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the partners must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 1 July 2021 and 1 December 2021. Projects approved for funding that have not started within this period may lose their allocation.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 11 pages using the designated template found at the end of this call.
• CVs (maximum four pages each) for the project manager and key project participants/work package leaders using the designated templates found at the end of this call.
• Letters of Intent from all partners listed. The letter must explain why the research project is important and describe the planned contributions to the project.
• For projects encompassing doctoral degrees, you must attach a letter of confirmation from the degree-conferring university/institution to the grant application. This does not apply if the Project Owner is the degree-conferring university/institution for the research fellow in question.

Grant applications that do not satisfy the above requirements will be rejected.

Optional attachments
Applicants are free to propose up to three referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed.

Attachments other than the mandatory attachments specified above, as well as any links to websites in the grant application, will not be included in the application review process.

Grant applications will be assessed in relation to the following criteria:

Once the grant applications have been received, the Research Council will conduct a preliminary administrative review to ensure that they satisfy all the stipulated formal requirements. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected.

The applications will then be distributed to referee panels comprised of impartial external specialists with expertise in the relevant thematic areas and disciplines. For each grant application, we check to ensure that the panel meets requirements relating to impartiality and has sufficient expertise to review the application’s research topic. Assessments from individual external specialists will be obtained in connection with some applications to support the panel in reaching a consensus-based assessment. The panel will assess the three criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation, and will assign a consensus-based mark for each of these criteria.

After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the relevance criterion. Applications that receive an average mark of 4 or lower from the panel will not be eligible for funding and will therefore not be assessed in relation to relevance.

The assessment of the relevance criterion and the panel’s review are used to calculate the grant application’s overall mark, which is the average of the marks for the four equally weighted criteria. The Research Council will draw up a recommendation on which applications to fund based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio, which will then form the basis for the portfolio boards’ funding decisions.