Functioning of the Financial Market and Ethical Awareness – Funding for Research Projects
Important dates
06 Apr 2022
Åpen for søknad
25 May 2022
Søknadsfrist
01 Jan 2023
Earliest permitted project start
01 Aug 2023
Latest permitted project start
31 Jul 2027
Latest permitted project completion
Important dates
Purpose
The Finance Market Fund provides funding to research and public information work relating to financial markets. The fund is designed to help to increase knowledge about how financial markets function and to promote greater understanding of relevant ethical issues in this area. Applications must clearly demonstrate that the project is of relevance in relation to the purpose of the Finance Market Fund and that the funding will have a trigger effect. The grant application must also describe the potential ramifications if the funding amount awarded is smaller than what was originally sought.
Please see the rules set out for the Finance Market Fund at www.finansmarkedsfondet.no (in Norwegian only).
About the call for proposals
The call aims to stimulate high-quality, ground-breaking research at the international research front. The research results must be relevant to the Norwegian finance market.
You will find rules and regulations and the Board of Directors’ application guide on the Finance Market Fund’s website.
The Norwegian-language call for proposals is the legally binding version.
Who is eligible to apply?
Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply.
See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.
Who can participate in the project?
Requirements relating to the Project Owner
The Project Owner must be a research organisation.
The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have authorised the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.
If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner submits the application on behalf of all the partners.
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.
Requirements relating to employment
The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or one of the partners.
Other requirements
You can only be the project manager for one application for a Researcher Project with the Finance Market Fund’s deadline of 25 May.
Requirements relating to partners
Approved Norwegian research organisations and equivalent foreign organisations are eligible to participate as partners in the project and receive funding.
What can you seek funding for?
You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.
You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner is to obtain information about costs from each project partner. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant category.
Funding may be granted for the following costs:
- Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum three person-years.
- This encompasses operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the execution of the project.
- Operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out R&D efforts under the project.
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.
Scope of funding
The Finance Market Fund does not have an upper or lower limit for funding. However, in multi-year projects, allocations are only made for one year at a time and annual allocations are based on an approved annual progress report.
There are no requirements for own funding, but some own financing of researcher time is required for applications from the university and university college sector.
Calculation of funding
You can apply for funding for budgeted project costs. Payroll costs must be based on the lump-sum rates for research fellows for project partners in Norway.
Conditions for funding
The project must start between 1 January 2023 and 1 August 2023. The latest permitted completion date for the project is 31 July 2027.
The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of support 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. Please note that the Finance Market Fund’s rules and regulations set out some restrictions as regards multi-year allocations. The Finance Market Fund’s Board of Directors therefore makes annual allocations based on a submitted and approved annual progress report.
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 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 in connection with the revised application. Research data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
- The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the data management plan for the project.
Reporting and disbursement of funding
Funding will be disbursed every four months, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reporting takes place electronically.
Relevant thematic areas for this call
Policy and government administration areas
Practical information
Requirements for this application type
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 attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
Mandatory attachments
- A project description using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
- The CV of the project manager using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
- CVs of key members of the project using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.
Optional attachments
- Proposals for up to three referees who are considered qualified to assess the application
We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.
Assessment criteria
We assess applications on the basis of the following criteria:
Excellence – potential for advancing the state-of-the-art
• Scientific creativity and originality.
• Novelty and boldness of hypotheses or research questions.
• Potential for development of new knowledge beyond the current state-of-the-art, including significant theoretical, methodological, experimental or empirical advancement.
Excellence – quality of R&D activities
• Quality of the research questions, hypotheses and project objectives, and the extent to which they are clearly and adequately specified.
• Credibility and appropriateness of the theoretical approach, research design and use of scientific methods. Appropriate consideration of interdisciplinary approaches.
• The extent to which appropriate consideration has been given to ethical issues, safety issues, gender dimension in research content, and use of stakeholder/user knowledge if appropriate.
Impact
• Potential for academic impact:
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future scientific challenges.
• Potential for societal impact (if addressed by the applicant):
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address UN Sustainable Development Goals or other important present and/or future societal challenges.
• The extent to which the potential impacts are clearly formulated and plausible.
Communication and exploitation
• Quality and scope of communication and engagement activities with different target audiences, including relevant stakeholders/users.
Implementation
• The extent to which the project manager has relevant expertise and experience, and demonstrated ability to perform high-quality research (as appropriate to the career stage).
• The degree of complementarity of the participants and the extent to which the project group has the necessary expertise needed to undertake the research effectively.
The quality of the project organisation and management
• Effectiveness of the project organisation, including the extent to which resources assigned to work packages are aligned with project objectives and deliverables.
• Appropriateness of the allocation of tasks, ensuring that all participants have a valid role and adequate resources in the project to fulfil that role.
• Appropriateness of the proposed management structures and governance.
Relevance to the call for proposals
Administrative procedures
All applications will be assessed by international referee panels. After the panel assessment, the applications will be assessed in relation to the criterion ‘Relevance to the call for proposals’. The administration will then write a recommendation to the Board of Directors of the Finance Market Fund. The Board of Directors is responsible for the final decisions regarding grant allocations.
The funding decisions are expected to be announced in week 45.