Researcher Project for Young Talents (FRIPRO)

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for 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.

Requirements relating to project managers

Experience requirements: You must have an approved doctorate and the period between the date of defence of your doctoral dissertation and the application deadline may be between two and seven years. You must have defended your dissertation no earlier than 15 March 2016 and no later than 15 March 2021.

Age requirement: You must be younger than 40 years old on the date of the application submission deadline. This means that you must have been born on or after 15 March 1983.

If more than seven years have passed since you defended your dissertation or if you were born before 15 March 1983, you may apply to subtract leaves of absence, compulsory military or civilian service or sick leave in accordance with our rules for subtracting time.

• It is not possible to receive funding for a Researcher Project for Young Talents more than once.
• You must dedicate at least 25 per cent of a full-time position to the project for the duration of the project period.
• You must be employed for at least 50 per cent of a full-time position by the Project Owner (research organisation) for the entire duration of the project period.

You can only be the project manager for one application submitted for either a Researcher Project for Young Talents (this call), Researcher Project for Young Talents (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal (thematic priority call with deadline 8 February 2023), Knowledge-building Project for Industry or Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges (deadline 15 February 2023).

Requirements relating to partners

Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see the section ‘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.

As Project Owner and/or partner in the project, you can engage subcontractors to deliver services and contribute to the completion of certain tasks in the project. 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.
• 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.
• Research stay abroad for the project manager, relevant for the project, with a duration of minimum 3 and maximum 12 months. At the starting date of the research stay abroad, you must not have studied or worked for more than 12 months over the past three years in the country where the international host institution is located. Exceptions may be made to this rule if the international host institution has equipment, facilities and expertise that are not available in Norway or other countries that would be appropriate for a researcher stay. You will find detailed information on our website about research stays abroad.

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

The Research Council can provide NOK 4–8 million in funding per project under this call. 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. For researcher positions in the institute sector you must use hourly rates reported by the institute.

Conditions for funding

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 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 must meet the following requirements:

• The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in 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 1.11.2023 and 1.9.2024.

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

Mandatory attachments

The mandatory attachments must be prepared using designated templates found at the end of the call.

• A project description, maximum 11 pages.
• A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages.
• If you apply to subtract time to satisfy the age or experience requirement, you must submit documentation of this. (To be uploaded under Attachments/Other items in the application form.)

Optional attachments

• CVs of key project participants not exceeding four pages each. You must use the CV template found 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.
• 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.

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.

Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on the type of templates that can be uploaded in the application form.

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

Read about the administrative procedure for the Researcher Project calls in 2023.