Collaborative Project relating to Antimicrobial Resistance from a One Health Perspective

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations in effective collaboration with relevant actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, the business sector and/or other private organisations.

Who can apply for the earmarked funding (see above)?

Approved Norwegian research organisations in effective collaboration with actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, the business sector and/or private organisations from developing countries (LLMIC countries) and/or India and China.

See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The Project Owner must be a Norwegian research organisation approved by the Research Council (see above).

The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council. The application must be aligned with the Project Owner’s strategies.

Requirements relating to project managers

You must have an approved doctorate or achieved professor/associate professor qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline. For the purposes of this call, you are also qualified if you hold or have held a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) in the institute sector.

You may only be the project manager for one application submitted for either this call, a Collaborative Project in Global Health, a Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges, a Knowledge-building Project for Industry (deadline 9 February 2022 ), a Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal, a Researcher Project for Young Talents or a Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility (deadline 2 February 2022).

Requirements relating to partners

Projects are to be carried out by one or more research organisations in effective collaboration with relevant actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, the business sector and/or other private organisations.

The project must have at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations (see the guide for a definition). These must be partners from the business sector or other parts of society that will contribute their experience and knowledge and ensure that the project and its objectives address real societal and/or industry-related challenges.

In this call, NOK 25 million of the total funding is earmarked for equitable collaboration with low- and lower-middle income countries (LLMIC countries) (NOK 15 million) and collaboration with China and India (NOK 10 million).

• Projects primarily targeting the earmarked funding must have a minimum of two partners that are not research organisations of which at least one must be from a low- and lower-middle income country (LLMIC) and/or India and China.
• Projects targeting the funding earmarked for LLMIC countries must address human health.
• The partners from the business sector or other parts of society must participate actively in the project. At least 10 per cent of the project’s total costs must be used by these partners. The guide describes this as the ‘participation requirement’.
• 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 grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners. This must be confirmed in the Letters of Intent.
• The project must have a steering group or reference group which includes partners that represent the industry-related or societal challenge.
• The project must not involve contract research. The project proposal must describe how the knowledge developed in the project will be of benefit to wider user groups.

One and the same project participant may not be assigned more than one role in the project, e.g. as Project Owner and partner or subcontractor.

You can apply for funding to cover the costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information about costs from each project partner. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant category.

The following cost categories must be used:

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations, and the partners’ personnel hours. For doctoral research fellowships, funding is limited to a maximum of three full-time equivalents. Funding for two to four years may be granted for post-doctoral research fellowships.
• Equipment, encompassing operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the project.
• Other operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to implement the project. Procurements from subcontractors that exceed NOK 100,000 must be specified.

Do not use the item Procurement of R&D services.

You will find important and more detailed information about what to enter in the project budget on the Research Council’s website.

The costs of Norwegian partners

As described under the section ‘Requirements relating to partners’, at least 10 per cent of the total costs must be used by those representing the industry-related or societal challenge in the project. This can be in the form of payroll expenses or other project costs.

The Research Council’s funding can be used to finance the costs of all Norwegian partners in the project. This means that the partners’ costs can be covered in part or in full, but the participants are naturally free to fund their own costs in the project.

The state aid rules impose certain restrictions on funding for partners that are undertakings. The level of support (aid intensity) permitted will depend on the undertaking’s size and the type of activity that is carried out (basic research or industrial research). If the application is recommended for funding, we will request more information to ensure that our allocation is in accordance with the state aid rules.

The costs of international partners

The Research Council’s funding can be used to finance the costs of international research organisations. Please note that for doctoral research fellows whose degree-conferring institution is located abroad, the project can only fund the part of the work the research fellow contributes to the project, and not the doctoral degree in its entirety.

The earmarked funding in this call can be used to fund the costs of partners from low- and lower-middle income countries (LLMIC) and/or India and China. LLMICs are defined in the OECD DAC list as ‘least developed countries, low income countries, and lower middle income countries and territories which are not LDCs’.

The costs of other international partners from the public or private sector that are not based in an LLMIC or China/India will not receive funding under this call. These costs must be excluded from the budget tables. The activities these partners will perform, as well as any self-funded activities, should be described in the project description (under section 3.2) if you would like this information to be taken into account when the application is reviewed.

Conditions for funding

The funding allocated to research organisations is to go to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research. It does not therefore constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities.

The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference: GBER 55/2022/R&D&I (the correct reference will be published later). Companies serving as partners may have parts of their project costs covered in accordance with the General Block Exemption Regulation Article 25 (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014). Conditions and concepts are to be interpreted in keeping with corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of conflict between the text of the call and the state aid rules, the latter will have precedence.

State aid may not be given to an undertaking that is subject to an outstanding recovery order following a formal decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority or the European Commission stating that state aid received is illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor can the Research Council award state aid to an enterprise that is defined as an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ under the state aid rules, unless the undertaking was not in difficulty as of 31 December 2019, but became an undertaking in difficulty in the period 1 January 2020 – 30 June 2021. It may in such case receive funding.

The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration, as defined in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

If the project is awarded funding, the Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreement(s) with all 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 from research organisations that are partners. 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.

If the project involves research fellows whose responsible university/university college institution is not participating in the application, you must also have a collaboration agreement with the responsible/degree-conferring institution.

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of funding can be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the page What the contract involves. Projects awarded funding under this call are required to submit an annual project account report documenting incurred project costs and their financing.

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

• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies in Norway (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. This must be in place when they sign the grant agreement for projects awarded funding from the Research Council. The requirement does not apply to the business sector, special interest organisations or the non-governmental sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications. 
• You must prepare a data processing plan for any research data that will be processed in the project. Research data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
• The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project.
• For medical and health-related studies involving human participants, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and disclosure of results.

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 grant 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 application and all attachments must be submitted in English. 
• All mandatory attachments must be included. Attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• 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 2022 and 1 December 2022. 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. You must use the template for 2022.
• CVs of the project manager and key project participants not exceeding four pages each. The CV template at the end of the call must be used. Applicants themselves are to decide which project participants are most important and in which cases it will be of significance to the review process to assess these participants’ qualifications.
• Letters of Intent from all registered research organisations participating as partners.
• Letters of Intent from all registered partners that contribute from the perspective of the business sector or other part of society.
• See the example Letter of Intent in our guide.

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.

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria:

You can read more about the application review process for a Collaborative and Knowledge-building Project on the Research Council’s website.

In summary, the process is as follows: 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 thematic referee panels to be assessed in relation to the criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the application’s relevance to the call.

The portfolio boards’ decisions are also based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio. The portfolio assessment takes the following factors into account:

• The applications’ assigned marks based on the assessments.
• The distribution of projects in relation to priorities set out for the specific topic.
• Connections between grant applications received under other calls within the same thematic area.
• Any changes in the financial or scientific framework set by the ministries.
• Priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.

The meetings of the portfolio boards will be held in the last half of June 2022. The outcome of the application processing will be published after these meetings.