Large-scale Interdisciplinary Researcher Project (Thematic Priority Call)

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the grant application must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.

Requirements relating to the project manager

You must have an approved doctorate or equivalent qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline.

If you do not have an approved doctorate but are qualified at associate professorship level or have current or previous employment in a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) in the institute sector or a health trust, you are also qualified.

You can only be the project manager for one application submitted for other calls with a deadline of either 8 or 15 February 2023. This limitation does not apply to Large-scale Interdisciplinary Researcher Projects. You can therefore be the project manager in two different applications for calls with these deadlines if one of the applications is for a Large-scale Interdisciplinary Researcher Project.

Requirements relating to partners

The project must have an interdisciplinary approach and incorporate collaboration between researchers from different subject fields. If this collaboration involves researchers at different institutions, the respective institutions must be listed as partners. Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see under ‘Who is eligible to apply?’ above) and corresponding research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and to receive Researcher Project funding.

Other types of organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects.

Read more about partners here.

Subcontractors cannot be granted any rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations governing public procurements must, in the normal manner, select subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. R&D providers cannot be included in the project.

A project participant may not be assigned two different roles in the project. This means that a sub-contractor for the project may not have the role of Project Owner or partner in the same project.

You may seek funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to execute 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 research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum three person-years. For post-doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum four person-years.
• Equipment. 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. Procurements from subcontractors that exceed NOK 100,000 must be specified.

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

Scope of funding

You can apply for a minimum of 12 million NOK in funding per project under this call. The maximum amount you can apply for will be specified under the topic in question. There are no requirements for own financing. If our lump-sum rates do not cover all the costs associated with recruitment positions in the university and university college sector or the institute sector, or researcher positions in the university and university college sector, the difference must be covered through own funding. Reported hourly rates must be used for researcher positions in the institute sector.

Conditions for funding

The researchers participating in the project must represent two or more different subject groups as defined at level 2 of the Norwegian Classification of Scientific Disciplines (only in Norwegian) (opens in new tab), drawn up by Universities Norway (UHR).

The Research Council will not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that funding is only to go to your non-economic activity. We require a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Our requirements relating to allocation 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 to be found on our information page What the contract involves.

If your project is awarded funding, the following must be in place before you submit your revised grant 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-profit sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications.
• For all projects that manage research data, the Project Owner must ensure that a data management plan is drawn up and uploaded when the grant application is being revised. You will find more information about what the data management plan must contain here.
• 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 registration and disclosure of medical and health-related studies involving human participants.

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 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 must meet the following requirements:

• The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in English, except for the description of relevance to the selected topic in the call, which may be submitted in Norwegian or English.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 15 September 2023 and 1 April 2024.
• You must clearly demonstrate that the project is within the priorities described for the topic from which you are applying for funding.

Applications that do not satisfy the requirements listed above may be rejected.

Mandatory attachments

The designated templates found at the end of the call for proposals must be used for all attachments.

• A project description, maximum 15 pages.
• A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages.
• CVs of key researchers participating in the interdisciplinary collaboration, not exceeding four pages each.
  
  • 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.
• A description of the project’s relevance to the selected topic. (To be uploaded under Attachments/Other items in the application form.)

Optional attachments

• Applicants are free to enclose a short description of qualifications or propose up to three referees who are presumed to be qualified to review their grant proposal. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed.

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

Attachments other than the mandatory and optional 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:

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 administrative procedure for Researcher Project here.

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 may be rejected.

The applications will then be distributed to thematic referee panels to be assessed in relation to the criteria Excellence – potential for advancing the state-of-the-art, Excellence – quality of R&D activities, Impact and Implementation.

From 2023, the referees will assess applications for Researcher Project for open science as part of the criterion Impact. Here you will find more information about assessment of open science in grant applications.

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;
• a good distribution of projects in relation to the priorities set out for the specific topic;
• the relative volume and quality of grant applications within the same topic under other calls in 2023;
• 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 decision meetings of the portfolio boards will be held in the end of June 2023. The outcome of the application processing will be published after these meetings.