Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists (Thematic Priority Call)

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 the project manager 

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 6 March 2017 and no later than 6 March 2022. 

If more than seven years have passed since you defended your dissertation, you can apply for deductions for statutory leave, compulsory military or civil service, asylum seeker or refugee status or sick leave in accordance with our deduction rules. 

Deduction rules 

You can apply for a deduction if you have: 

• had statutory leaves, 
• completed compulsory initial military or civilian service (up to 12 months deduction for each), 
• applied for asylum or refugee status (deduction for the period from submission until you receive an answer to your application for asylum or refugee status and/or granting a residence permit), or 
• had continuous full-time and/or part-time sick leave corresponding to at least eight weeks of full-time absence. 

The deduction periods must have taken place after the defence date. 

In order to grant a deduction, we require that you enclose documentation of what you are applying for a deduction for when you submit the application. You must also fill in the deduction in the application form. We accept documentation from NAV, doctors/health services or other public bodies/agencies (in Norway or another country), and employer. Documentation from the supervisor/previous supervisor is not sufficient. If you use documentation from your employer, it must be from the employer's administration, such as the HR department. The documentation must be in Norwegian, Swedish, Danish or English, or an approved translation into one of these languages must be provided. 

We follow the leave rules described in the Working Environment Act, and you can apply for a deduction for leave of absence that you would have been entitled to if you lived in Norway when you had the leave. For example, you may be entitled to a deduction for parental leave in a country where parental leave is not statutory if you actually had parental leave. The requirement is that you can document the leave as described above.  

• You must work at least 25 per cent of a full-time position in the project during the project period. 
• You must be employed in at least a 50 per cent position at the Project Owner (research organisation) throughout the project period. You can be/be employed in a position as a postdoctoral fellow, researcher or another academic position. You may, but must not, be employed by the Project Owner when you submit the grant application. 

Requirements relating to partners 

We do not require partners under this call. If you are going to include partners, the following applies: 

• Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see under 'Who is eligible to apply?' above) and equivalent 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. 

As Project Owner and/or partner in the project, you can engage subcontractors to provide services and contribute to the implementation of certain tasks in the project. Subcontractors may not be granted rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations for public procurement must in the normal manner carry out the selection of subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. It is not possible to have R&D suppliers in the project.  

A project participant may not have two different roles in the project. This means that a sub-contractor may not serve as Project Owner or partner in the project at the same time. 

You may seek funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner is to obtain information about costs from the project partners. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant cost category. 

The grant application requires you to break down the project budget into the following cost categories: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses: costs related to researcher time (including research fellowships and the position of project manager) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral research fellowships, support is limited to a maximum of three full-time equivalents. For post-doctoral fellowships, funding is limited to a maximum of four years in accordance with the Regulations relating to terms and conditions of employment for positions such as post-doctoral fellowship, research fellow, research assistant and specialist candidate.  
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All costs entered as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.  
• Equipment, which are costs that include operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary to carry out the project; 

The cost type Procurement of R&D services should not be used.  

If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are specific plans for research stays abroad for these, this may be included in the application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Research Fellows. Here, the project manager can apply for funding for research stays abroad for research fellows participating in the project during the project period.  Please note that the separate call for proposals sets out a number of requirements regarding who is eligible for support for the stay abroad  

If there are specific plans for visiting researcher stays or stays abroad for researchers participating in the project, this may be included in the application. The rules for such stays, as well as rates, can be found via the budget information page (see below). 

You will find detailed and important information about what the budget should contain on the website.   

Scope of funding 

The Research Council may provide NOK 4–8 million in funding per project under this call. 

We do not require own financing. If our lump sum rates do not cover all costs for recruitment positions in the university and university college sector or for researcher positions in the university and university college sector, we assume that you cover the difference with own funding. For researcher positions in the institute sector, you must use reported hourly rates. 

Conditions for funding 

We will not award state aid under this call. This means that the funding should only go to their non-economic activity. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. Our requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, can be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the information page This is what the contract consists of.  

If the project is awarded funding, the following must be in place when you revise the grant application: 

• The Research Council's requirements relating to awards can be found in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects on the information page What the contract involves.  
• 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 before the contract is signed for projects awarded funding from the Research Council. The requirement does not apply to private businesses, special interest organisations or the voluntary sector.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles; see Plan S - open access to publications.   
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised grant application. Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from the Research Council.  
• For medical and health-related studies involving human participants, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results.  

The application must be created and submitted via "My RCN Web". You can amend and submit the application several times up to the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted last that we will process. 

The application must meet the following requirements: 

• The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in English, with the exception of the description of relevance to the topic, which may be submitted in Norwegian or English. 
• 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 October 2024 and 1 April 2025. 
• You must clearly demonstrate that the project meets the priorities described in the topic from which funding is being sought. 

The application may be rejected if it does not meet the requirements in the list above. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description 
• CV for the project manager. 
• Documentation of deduction if you apply for a deduction for experience. (We don't have a separate template for this. The document must be uploaded under Attachments/Other items in the application form.)  
• Description of relevance on a maximum of one page. When describing the application's relevance, we recommend that you read the relevant thematic text carefully. Uploaded as attachment type "Other". 

Applications that do not satisfy the above requirements will be rejected. You must use default templates for all required attachments. The templates can be found at the end of the call.  

Optional attachments 

• CVs for the key project participants, maximum four pages each. It is mandatory to use the CV template at the end of the call. 
  • You will assess which project participants are the most important, and in which cases it will be of significance for the application review process to assess the qualifications of the project participants. 
• If you wish, you can enclose a brief description of competence or proposals for up to three referees you believe will be suitable for assessing your application. We are not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form. 

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the call for proposals and on the basis of the following criteria:

We will consider your application as it has been submitted, and cannot take into account how an equal or approximately the same application has been assessed previously by us. 

Here you can read more about the treatment procedure for Researcher Projects. 

In brief, the process is as follows: Once the applications have been received, the Research Council will first carry out a preliminary assessment to check that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements may be rejected. 

In addition, grant applications that fall outside the thematic delimitations set out in the call will be rejected. Decisions to this effect are made by the individual portfolio boards. 

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

From 2023, referees will assess applications for Researcher Projects on Open Research Practice as part of the impact and impact criterion. On this website you will find more information about the assessment of open research in grant applications.  

After the panel has completed its assessment, we will assess the application's relevance to the call. The Research Council also bases its decisions by the portfolio boards on an overall portfolio assessment. This takes into account the following factors:  

• The applications' assigned marks based on the assessments. 
• A good distribution of projects in accordance with priority areas set out in the thematic area. 
• The relationship between the number of applications and the quality of the applications within the same topic in other calls for proposals in 2024. 
• Any changes in the ministries' financial or scientific framework for funding. 

See also: How we process applications.