INTPART International Partnerships for Excellent Education, Research and Innovation

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply for funding.

See the Research Council’s definition and list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved your submission of the grant application. Applications related to Norwegian Innovation Clusters must be approved by the cluster's board of directors.

The Project Owner must have degree-conferring programmes at master's and/or PhD level, or have documented collaboration with a Norwegian research organisation with such programmes for the INTPART project. General collaboration agreements are not approved.

At the time of the application deadline, the Project Owner must be a host institution or formal partner in peer-reviewed projects with ongoing funding through one of the following schemes:

• Norwegian Centres of Excellence (SFF);
• Centres for Environment-friendly Energy Research (FME);
• Centres of Excellence in Higher Education (SFU);
• Centres for Research-based Innovation (SFI);
• Centres for Clinical Treatment Research scheme (FKB); 
• The Norwegian Artistic Research Programme (NARP); 
• Research Centres for Petroleum Activities (PETROSENTER);
• Norwegian Innovation Clusters;
• Collaborative and Knowledge-building Project, funded by the Research Council;
• Researcher project, funded by the Research Council;
• Researcher projects and centre schemes funded by NordForsk or the Nordic Council of Ministers;
• Researcher projects funded by the EU Framework Programme;
• Research projects funded by research programmes under the EEA and Norway Grants

Information about the project being funded, including the scheme it is funded under, project number and other project identification, must be entered in its own template.

Maximum number of applications per research organisation

The Project Owner may submit a maximum number of grant applications based on the size of the institution:

• more than 1,500 R&D personnel: 20 applications;
• 500–1,500 R&D personnel: 10 applications;
• 100–500 R&D personnel: 5 applications;
• fewer than 100 R&D personnel: 3 applications.

Exceptions to the number restriction: Formalised institutional cooperation that has lasted more than three years, and where several Norwegian higher education institutions constitute a consortium that cooperates with one or more outstanding equivalent institutions in the priority countries, will be exempt from the number restriction

The Project Owner must submit a list of the applications approved by the institution. The list must be submitted regardless of how many applications within the approved framework the institution chooses to submit. We will not process applications that are not listed in such a list. Send the list by e-mail to intpart@forskningsradet.no by the application deadline of 16 March 2022 at 13.00 (CET).

Requirements relating to the project manager

The project manager should have experience with collaborative projects, nationally and internationally. This also applies to responsible persons at the partner organisations.

Key personnel in the INTPART project must refer to significant roles in the ongoing project on which the INTPART grant is based. It will usually mean being a project manager, work package manager, team leader or the like. Otherwise, see separate form for this. 

Employment requirements

The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner.

Requirements relating to partners

The INTPART project shall have a partner who is a university, university college or other research institution in the partner country, with a named local contact person.

Other types of organisations nationally and in partner countries, including Norwegian Innovation Clusters, companies, and other enterprises, may be partners in INTPART. Such partners cannot be supported directly over the INTPART project, but may be subcontractors. See our website for more information about subcontractors.

You can apply for funding for international collaborative activities that are not already funded through the qualifying project. You can apply for support both to establish new international partnerships and to strengthen existing cooperation.

Up to NOK 80 million is available under this call.

Funding for INTPART comes from several sources and some may have different guidelines attached to them. The funded portfolio as a whole shall ensure that these are achieved. The majority of the funds do not have special guidelines attached to them. This is a thematically open call, so applicants do not need to indicate, for example, a specific subjec topic or country affiliations in their application. This is taken into account in the portfolio assessment, see our Administrative procedures below.

Examples of activities that are eligible for funding:

• Additional expenses relating to short-term or long-term reciprocal mobility stays by students, researchers, managers and administrative staff;
• Development and implementation of workshops, seminars and conferences for the purpose of strengthening international cooperation;
• Development and implementation of intensive courses, field courses, summer schools etc.;
• Cooperation on curriculum development and development of joint courses, educational programmes and/or degree programmes;
• Joint researcher schools and international educational programmes based on research collaboration and institutionalised within the framework of the partnerships;
• Planning and development of research cooperation;
• Guest lectures and joint teaching and supervision of students and doctoral candidates;
• Cooperation with the business and public sectors;
• Development of digital forms of collaboration
• Other activities that encompass international research and educational cooperation.

We cannot cover expenses for the research activities covered by the collaboration or investments in research infrastructure. Education and teaching that are already part of the institution's ordinary study programmes must be financed in a different way. Costs for international partners who are research organisations , may be covered by  INTPART funding. Companies or other organisations that are not research organisations may be subcontractors to the INTPART project and thus receive funding. You will find detailed and important information about what the budget should contain on the website.

Scope of funding

We can provide funding of NOK 10 million per project under this call, which accounts for 80 per cent of the project costs. Self-financing is a requirement. Self-financing shall be at least 20 per cent of the project's total costs.

Conditions for funding

Only the Project Owner and collaborating research organisations can receive funding to cover their costs during the project. Funding goes to the non-economic activity of the research organisations, and we assume that the necessary accounting separation between economic and non-economic activity is in place. Other partners cannot be reimbursed for project costs through the award to the project, but must bear the costs themselves.

The Research Council's preconditions for allocation and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, are in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects which you can find in its entirety on our webpage What the contract involves.

The projects must start between 01.08.2022 and 31.10.2022 and you must apply for funding from the Research Council for 2022. The latest permitted completion of the project is 31.10.2027.

Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reporting takes place electronically. In addition to the annual reports and final reports to the Research Council, you may be asked to report to the INTPART programme via a survey from HK-dir.

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-profit sector.

General requirements

• The applicant/Project Owner must come from an eligible category of institution.
• The grant application must lie within the scope/satisfy the objectives of this call.
• The funding amount sought and the expenses to be covered must be in keeping with the framework of the call.
• The budget must be formulated correctly to clearly indicate what the funding will cover.
• The application form must be fully completed.
• The required attachments must be included using the designated templates.
• The project description must provide answers to the items set out in the text of the call.
• The application and all attachments must be written in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

You may revise and resubmit your grant application form 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.

All the templates for attachments are available for download at the end of the call for proposals.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description. The designated template for the project description must be used.
• A template that accounts for ongoing projects. The designated template must be used.
• CVs with a list of publications for the project manager, the project manager for the partner in the cooperating country, and other key project personnel, as well as information about educational expertise, teaching experience and experience from international cooperation in higher education. The designated template for CVs must be used.
• Formal confirmation from the management of the Norwegian and international partner institution, and the applicant institution, that provides strategy clarification and explains why the project is important to the institution must be attached to the application. This account must include information about the institution’s specific commitments relating to implementation of the INTPART project. This also applies to the Norwegian degree-conferring institution, cf. Section 12 of the Norwegian Institutions, see ‘Requirements relating to the project manager’ above. General cooperation agreements will not be accepted.
• Applications involving Norwegian Innovation Clusters must also attach documentation of approval of the application from the respective cluster’s board.

Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.

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 uploaded attachments, so please ensure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

Information about all the partners in the project (institutions) and all the project participants, including from one’s own institution (individuals) must be entered in the online application form. Please note that formal collaboration agreements are required for each partner listed in the grant application. These collaboration agreements are to be completed within three months after the Research Council has sent the contract to the Project Ownerand must have been received before the Research Council will disburse any funds.

The online application form must include a detailed milestone plan and a plan for how results relating to research and education will be disseminated. Details about the project being funded can be provided in the online application form under ‘Other’.

See the INTPART Programme description for details of the program's overall objective, objectives, and results. Here you will also find more information about and description of what is emphasised when assessing applications for this call. In the template for project description, you will also elaborate on this.

Please note that under the assessment criterion "Quality", we will emphasise relevance to the call for proposals and qualifying projects, and that for the criterion "Effects and effects" we will emphasise how the grant application relates to the objectives of this call.

Grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

The Research Council of Norway and HK-dir assume that the projects fulfil a high standard of research ethics, and that consideration of consequences for the natural environment is taken into account. The Research Council of Norway and HK-dir attach importance to internationalising Norwegian research and education, strengthening the recruitment of women to higher position levels and MNT subjects, improving the gender balance in Norwegian research and ensuring that the gender perspective is well taken care of in the projects. The Research Council and HK-dir will take this into account when prioritising the grant application.

After the application deadline, the INTPART secretariat will first make a pre-assessment to ensure that all formal requirements have been met. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected.

The applications are then assessed by experts from nationally and internationally leading research, education and innovation groups.

The experts assess the application against the above assessment criteria. The application is assessed by several experts who are assembled into panels. The impartiality of all experts is clarified before considering applications.

The panels will arrive at an agreed assessment of the individual application. The assessments from the experts are used as a basis when we decide whether or not an application should receive support.

A board committee consisting of representatives from the governing bodies of the Research Council and the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills  has the funding authority.

The Research Council and the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills use a comprehensive portfolio assessment as the basis for the board committee's decision. This takes into account the following factors:

• The grades given in the assessment of the applications;
• That the granted project portfolio as a whole meets the objectives of the INTPART scheme, and;
• That the granted project portfolio as a whole meets the objectives related to various funds from INTPART.

We expect to publish application results in October 2022.