Collaborative Project on the Implementation of Knowledge-based Measures for Children, Young People and Families

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply.

See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

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 can only be the project manager of one application submitted under this call for proposals. The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner.

Requirements relating to partners

Projects must be carried out by one or more research organisations in effective collaboration with relevant actors from public sector bodies, non-profit organisations and/or other organisations. Undertakings cannot receive funding under this call. In this context, an “undertaking” is defined as any actor that carries out an economic activity, i.e. offers products or services in a given market.

• The project must have at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations (see the guide for a definition). These must be public and societal actors that will contribute their experience and knowledge and ensure that the project and its objectives address real societal challenges.
• The public and societal actors must play an active role 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.
• The project must be carried out in effective collaboration, which means that all partners must actively contribute to the work on planning and following up the project. All partners must also contribute to the dissemination of the results and ensure that new knowledge is taken into use.
• The project must be aligned with the strategic objectives of all the partners. This must be confirmed in the Letters of Intent.
• The project must have a steering committee or reference group that includes partners that represent the 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.

Requirements relating to user participation

In addition to the partners (e.g. a municipality, other public sector body or non-profit organisation), the project must also involve the end users of the research. In the application, you must describe how partners and representatives of the end users (e.g. employees and employers, inhabitants, next of kin, users or non-profit organisations) are involved in the planning and implementation of the project and utilisation of the results.

The minimum amount of funding that may be sought is NOK 8 million. The maximum amount is NOK 10 million. The project may last from two to four years.

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 execution of the project.
• Other operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out 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.

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, the costs of such 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 in the course of the project period for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated with the project.

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 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 costs of international partners

The Research Council’s funding can be used to finance the costs of international research organisations. See Calculating payroll and indirect expenses for the university and university college sector.

The costs of other international partners will not be funded through the project grants. These costs must be excluded from the budget tables. The activities these partners will perform, as well as any self-funded costs, should be described in the project description (under section 3.2).

Conditions for funding

The project must start between 1 February 2023 and 1 August 2023. The latest permitted completion date for the project is 1 August 2027.

In addition to the guidelines set out in this call, the Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, available in their entirety on the information page What the contract involves.

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 research organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. The same applies to funding to other organisations. The funding is only to go to their non-economic activity, and if the organisation also engages in economic activity, there must be a clear separation of accounts.  Undertakings cannot receive funding under this call.

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

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 (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 the project we have awarded funding. The requirement does not apply to special interest organisations or the non-profit sector.
• We assume that the research will be carried out in 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 regulates the reciprocal rights and obligations of the Project Owner and project partners and ensures the integrity and independence of the research.
• 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.
• In addition to the guidelines set out in this call, 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 accounting report documenting incurred project costs and their financing.
• 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 February 2023 and 1 August 2023. 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.
• The CVs of the project manager and key project participants, not exceeding four pages each, using the mandatory CV template at the end of the call. 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. Key project participants who are researchers can use the “Template for CV researchers”. Other key project participants can use the “Template for CV”.
• Letters of Intent from all registered research organisations participating as partners.
• Letters of Intent from all registered partners that contribute from the perspective of society.
• See the example Letter of Intent in our guide.

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

Optional attachment

Applicants are free to enclose a short description of qualifications or propose up to three referees (whose place of work is not in Norway) whom you presume to be qualified to review your grant proposal. We are not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed.

All attachments must be submitted together with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the deadline for applications unless we have requested further information.

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. There is no technical validation of the content of uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

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

We will assess the version of your application that you submit and will not take into account how an identical or almost identical application has been assessed in the past.

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 grant application’s relevance to the call.

The portfolio boards’ decisions are 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 the 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
• that priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par

The portfolio board meeting will be held in December 2022, after which the outcome of the application processing will be published.