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Collaborative Project to Meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges

Vi tar forbehold om mulige endringer i utlysningen etter vi har mottatt tildelingsbrev fra departementene for 2025.

Important dates

22 Jan 2025

Open for applications

05 Mar 2025

Application deadline

01 Oct 2025

Earliest permitted project start

01 Apr 2026

Latest permitted project start

Important dates

Purpose

The purpose of this call is to encourage research organisations to collaborate with relevant actors from society and the industry sector to develop new knowledge and build research expertise that is necessary to address important societal challenges. We require that you collaborate with at least two relevant actors outside the research sector. 

About the call for proposals

Through this call, we support projects in which research organisations and actors outside the research sector work together to develop new knowledge needed to address important societal challenges. 

The research in the project can be both basic and applied, but please note that we have the same funding rates for both for the companies that participate. 

In addition to this call, we have four others with a deadline of 5 March aimed at research organisations who must be Project Owners. The total of five calls for proposals are the three thematic Researcher Project calls (Researcher Project for Early Careers, Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal and Large Interdisciplinary Researcher Project (link to be provided)), and the two calls for Collaborative and Knowledge-building Projects (Knowledge-building Projects for Industry and Collaborative Project to Meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges (this call)). The thematic texts under this call provide information about which of the other calls may be of relevance to the individual topic.   

We therefore recommend that you also read through any other relevant calls to see which one is most suitable for your project. Please note that we do not move applications between the calls, and that it is therefore important to apply to the correct call. 

Please also note that you can only serve as project manager for one application for this and our four other calls with deadline in March. This restriction does not apply to FRIPRO's open-ended calls for proposals. It is therefore possible to apply for one of the five calls mentioned above, and to the FRIPRO calls. 

This call constitutes a funding scheme that is notified to the EFTA Surveillance Authority, ESA, and the scheme must be implemented in accordance with the EEA Agreement's state aid rules. Read more about state aid under the heading "Conditions for funding". 

Before applying, you must acquaint yourself with the "Collaborative Project to Meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges – Guide for Applicants".  

The call is available in both Norwegian and English. The text of the Norwegian call for proposals is legally binding. 

Who is eligible to apply?

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.  

Who can participate in the project?

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application to the Research Council. The application must be strategically anchored with the Project Owner. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

The project manager's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by peers. There are no formal requirements for the project manager's qualifications. 

Requirements for collaboration and roles in the project 

  • The project must have at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations (see the guidelines for definition). These must be actors from society or the industry sector who contribute expertise and experience, and who ensure that the project and its objectives address real challenges in society and/or the industry sector. 
  • Approved research organisations (ref. «Who can apply») cannot act as an actor from society or the industry sector. The health trusts are exempt from this requirement. 
  • The application must be strategically supported by all partners. They must confirm this in a letter of intent. 
  • You must carry out the project in effective collaboration. Read more in the guide and under Article 25: Important definitions.  
  • The Project Owner and partners must be independent of each other. This means that one cannot have a controlling influence over the other. This applies both between the Project Owner and the partner, and between all the partners. The subcontractors and the Project Owner/partners must also be independent of each other. By controlling influence, we mean majority ownership or other specific legal or factual circumstances that mean that one actor can control the other. Read more about such dependencies here.   
  • At least 10 per cent of the project's total costs must be used by the partners who are not research organisations. In the guidelines, this is referred to as the participation requirement. You make this visible in the table in the project description. 
  • A project participant may not have multiple roles in the project, for example as partner or subcontractor.  
  • The project must have a steering group or reference group where the partners are represented. 
  • The project must not be commissioned research. In the application, you must describe how the expertise built up in the project can benefit larger user groups. 

What can you seek funding for?

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong. 

The following cost types should be used: 

  • Payroll and indirect expenses 
  • Equipment 
  • Other operating expenses 

The item Procurement of R&D services must not be used.  

If doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows are included in the project and there are specific plans for them to stay abroad, this may be included in the application. The Research Council also has a separate call for proposals for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Research Fellows.   

If there are specific plans for visiting researchers or stays abroad for researchers in the project, this may also be included in the application. The rules for such stays and information about rates can be found on our budget page. 

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

Costs incurred by Norwegian partners 

Industry partners 

Companies that are to be partners must be registered in the Norwegian Register of Business Enterprises and have economic activity in Norway. By economic activity, we mean offering goods or services in a market. This means that the partner must either be a private company, or a public enterprise that conducts activities of an industrial or commercial nature. The partners whose project costs are covered by our support will be recipients of state aid. The state aid rules impose restrictions on such financing. These restrictions depend on the size of the enterprise and the type of research being conducted. Please note that this call only provides funding for industrial research.   

If the application is recommended for funding, we will ask for more information to ensure that our funding is in line with the regulations. 

Public actors 

Public actors other than those mentioned in the section above are not covered by the state aid rules. This means that we can cover up to 100 per cent of their costs. 

Costs incurred by foreign partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover the costs of the foreign research organisations. See Partners abroad.  

We cannot cover costs for other foreign partners. These costs must therefore be kept out of the budget tables. However, you must mention the activities they will carry out, as well as their costs, in the project description (see section 3.2). 

Ethics 

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion for Research Quality. In the template for the project description, there is a separate section that deals with this. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the peers that there is a plan in place to deal with the most important ethical dilemmas in the project. If you need to describe this in more detail, this can be done elsewhere in the project description, for example under method selection, or you can do so in the data management plan(s) (see below). 

The responsibility for compliance with the research ethics standard lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf.  The Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics). 

The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval. 

Conditions for funding 

  • Support to the research organisations goes to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research. It therefore does not constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation's economic and non-economic activities. 
  • The call for proposals has been notified as an aid scheme to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference GBER XX/2025/R&D&I. If an undertaking is to receive support to cover a portion of its project costs as a partner in the project, this must be done in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014). See the Consolidated Block Exemption Regulation with amendments up to and including June 2023 (link opens in a new window). In addition, the general conditions in Chapter I of the Regulation must be met. Conditions and concepts are to be interpreted in keeping with the corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of any conflict between the announcement and the state aid rules, the latter shall take precedence. For the same reason, the call for proposals may also be adjusted.  
  • State aid may not be awarded to an undertaking that has not fulfilled the repayment requirement pursuant to a prior decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority/the European Commission where the aid has been declared to be illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor may aid be awarded to undertakings in difficulties under EEA law. 
  • We require annual project accounting reports documenting incurred project costs and their financing. The Research Council's prerequisites for awarding and disbursing funding are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.  

If the project is approved, the following must be in place when you revise the application: 

Reporting and disbursement of funding

You must submit an annual project accounting report documenting the costs incurred and how they are financed. 

We pay the support in arrears. You will receive more information about this if the project should be awarded funding from us. 

All reporting must be done electronically. 

Relevant thematic areas for this call

The topics under this call are grouped into the thematic areas below. The thematic texts contain special requirements and guidelines that will be given weight when assessing grant applications. 

More topics to come.

Cross-cutting topics

Societal security and preparednessAreas under pressureFood, environment, climate and public health

Energy and transportation

CO2 capture and storageEnergy transition and impacts on society, climate and nature

Health

Enabling technologies

Biotechnology

Welfare and education

Research in the museumsChildren and young adultsEducationEngineering and business administration education programmes

Practical information

Requirements for this application type

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 most recently that we process. 

  • The application and all attachments must be written in English, except for the relevance appendix, which may be in Norwegian. 
  • All mandatory attachments must be included. The attachments must be in PDF format. 
  • The project must start between 1 October 2025 and 1 April 2026. Projects that have received a decision on funding, but that do not start during this period, may lose their funding. 

Mandatory attachments 

  • A project description of a maximum of 11 pages, using the designated template that can be found at the end of the call. You must use the 2025 template. 
  • CVs for the project manager and key project participants, maximum four pages each. It is mandatory to use the CV template at the end of the call. Key project participants who are researchers can use the CV template called "Template for CV researchers". Other key project participants can use the CV template called "Template for CV". 
  • Letters of intent from all the partners (including the research organisations). See an example of a letter of intent on our guide page.  
  • Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. Uploaded as attachment type "Other". 

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Grant applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements, the requirements relating to the Project Owner or the requirements relating to collaboration and roles in the project, will be rejected. 

We will not consider attachments other than those specified above, or documents and websites linked to in the application. The system does not perform any technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so be sure to upload the correct file for the correct attachment type. 

Optional attachment 

You may attach suggestions for up to three referees (possibly academic communities) who you believe have the competence to assess the application. Alternatively, you may attach a brief description of the competence that you believe will be suitable to assess it. We are not obliged to use the suggestions but can use them if necessary. We encourage gender balance in the proposals. 

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

Assessment criteria

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

Excellence

The extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, novel, and goes beyond 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.

The quality of the proposed 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 societal responsibility, ethical issues and gender dimensions in research content.
• The extent to which appropriate consideration has been given to the use of stakeholder/user knowledge.

Impact

Potential impact of the proposed research
• The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future scientific challenges.
• The extent to which the planned outputs are openly accessible to ensure reusability of the research outputs and enhance reproducibility.
• The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future challenges for the sector(s).
• The extent to which the competence developed and planned outputs of the project will provide the basis for value creation in Norwegian business and/or development of the public sector.
• 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
• The extent to which the appropriate open science practices are implemented as an integral part of the proposed project to ensure open sharing and wide distribution of research outputs.
• Quality and scope of communication and engagement activities targeted towards relevant stakeholders/users.
• The extent to which the partners are involved in dissemination and utilisation of the project results.

Implementation

The quality of the project manager and project group
• 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.
• Appropriateness of the partners' contribution to the governance and execution of the project.

Relevance to the chosen topic

• The extent to which the project satisfies the thematic orientation described in the text for the chosen topic.
• The extent to which the project satisfies any other priorities in the text for the chosen topic.

Administrative procedures

We will consider your application as it has been submitted. 

Once the application deadline has passed, we will first check that all formal requirements have been met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

In addition, applications that are outside the thematic delimitations set out in the call will not be eligible for funding. Decisions on this are made by the individual portfolio boards. 

Where the requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available online for referees who individually assess the criteria "Excellence", "Impact " and "Implementation". The referees will then meet in thematic panels where they will reach a consensus assessment of the application for each of the three criteria. 

If, following the panel review, the application exceeds a threshold value, the Research Council's case officers will assess the application on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the call". The threshold value is set based on how many applications each topic receives, the grades after the referee panel has assessed them and how much funding is available. 

The assessment of the four above criteria is summarised in an overall mark for the application. The Research Council's administration then makes ranking lists based on this grade. 

Finally, it is the portfolio boards that decide whether the applications will be awarded funding or not. Their decisions are based on the ranking lists and an overall portfolio assessment. Under the individual topics in this call, the considerations taken by the portfolio boards will be stated. 

The portfolio boards will generally have decision meetings after the summer of 2025. We will publish the results of the application processing after these meetings. 

On the Research Council's website, you can read more about the processing procedure for Collaborative and Knowledge-building Projects.  

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