The Aurora Mobility Programme – Researcher Exchange for New Collaboration Between Norway and France

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations applying jointly with research organisations in France.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The organisation must be listed as the Project Owner in the application form and must have authorised you to submit the grant application.

If the application is a cooperation between several organizations in Norway, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all Norwegian participants.

Requirements relating to the project manager

To qualify as project manager, individuals must hold an approved doctorate or have obtained qualifications at associate professorship level (in Norwegian only) by the date of the application submission deadline. In this context, employment in the Norwegian research institute sector in a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior).

Typically, scientific staff/groups of researchers (normally 2–4 persons) will submit grant applications for funding for short-term stays in France. Early career researchers (including doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows) must participate in the travel activities.

Funding may be sought to cover travel and living expenses in France. Salary and purchase of equipment are not covered under the programme.
The following rates apply:

• Funding may be sought in a single grant application for 2–4 persons persons. A maximum of NOK 20 000 may be sought per person per calendar year. The maximum amount of support available per applicant/grant application is NOK 100 000.
• The Research Council may award funding to cover up to 100 per cent of approved project costs. The Research Council will disburse funding in arrears, based on the reported documented expenses.
• Travel expenses and actual costs relating to hotel accommodation and per diem according to the government rates for travel abroad. The rates per diem may be reduced if funding is sought for longer stays/multiple project participants.

If your project is granted funding, the following must be in place when you revise your grant application:

• From 2022 the Research Council requires a Gender Equiality Plan (GEP) for all research organisations before signing a grant agreement. The requirement does not apply to the business sector, special interest organisations or the non-profit sector.
• Support from the Research Council to a research organisation is to be reserved for the organisation’s non-economic activity, and as such therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities.
• The Research Council requires all scientific articles from the projects we fund to be made available immediately, which means without embargo and with an open licence that permits reuse of the publication. Plan S - open access to publications (forskningsradet.no)

Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reporting must be done electronically.

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 Norwegian or English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 5 pages using the designated template, found at the end of this call.
• CVs for the project manager and all project participants in Norway, using the designated template, found at the end of this call.

Links to websites and documents, as well as other attachments than those specified above, will not be included in the application review process.

There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments to the application you upload to our system, so please make sure that you upload the correct file corresponding to the selected attachment type.

Grant applications will first be assessed for scientific merit in France, and then by a Research Council administrative panel together with our partners in France.

Importance will be attached to the following when reviewing grant applications:

• The exchange helps to establish new collaboration between the applicant institutions in the two countries.
• There are early career researchers involved in the project.
• There is adequate gender balance in the project. Assuming that all other factors are equal, priority will be given to projects led by women project managers.
• The project team has described plans for any future collaborative projects, particularly under the direction of Horizon Europe.
• Whether the applicants or this project have received funding under the Aurora mobility programmes during the last two years (2021, 2022). Assuming that all other factors are equal, priority will be given to projects that have not received such funding in the last two years.

Decisions regarding grant allocations will be published in December 2022.