How Financial Markets Work and Ethical Awareness – Funding for Research Projects

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

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 

If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

You must have an approved doctoral degree or achieved associate professor qualifications before the application deadline. For the purposes of this call, being or having been employed as researcher 1, researcher 2 or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence. 

The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

You can be the project manager for a maximum of one application under this call. 

Requirements relating to partners 

Approved Norwegian research organisations and similar foreign organisations may participate as partners in the project and receive funding. 

Other types of organisations, including companies and other enterprises, may not be partners. 

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. 

We require that you break down the project budget into the following cost types in your application: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs incurred by the Project Owner and partners in research organisations.  
• Other operating expenses, which are expenses for other activities that are necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. All exenses entered as "Other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.  
• Equipment, which includes operating and depreciation expenses for scientific equipment necessary to carry out the project.  

The item Procurement of R&D services is not to 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. 

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

Scope of support 

The Finance Market Fund has no lower or upper support limit. We do not require own financing, but for the higher education sector, some own financing of researcher time is required. 

You can apply for funding for budgeted project expenses. For personnel expenses, you must use the lump sum rates for research fellows for project partners in Norway. 

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 Excellence. 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 panel 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, you can do so 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 ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research organisation (cf. the Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics Work). The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval. 

Conditions for funding 

Projects must start between 1 January 2026 and 1 August 2026, and you must apply for funding from the Research Council for 2026. The latest permitted project completion date is 31 July 2030. 

The Finance Market Fund's conditions for funding and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any commitments and disbursements for subsequent years, are set out in the Research Council's general terms and conditions for R&D projects, which can be found in full on the information page What the contract involves.

If the project is awarded funding, a contract will be entered into with the Research Council. 

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you are awarded funding: 

• The Research Council's conditions for funding can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves.  
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and handled the consideration of research security in the project. Research security refers to risks associated with unwanted transfer of knowledge and technology, impact on research and innovation, or breaches of research ethics/integrity where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values. 
• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects with funding from us. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups 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 application, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit the 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. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for project manager. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for key participants in the project. Use the template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 

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

Optional attachments 

• If you wish, you can attach a brief description of competence or suggestions for up to three peers you believe would be suitable to assess your application. We are not obliged to use the proposals, but can do so if necessary.  

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. 

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. 

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

The Board of Directors of the Finance Market Fund will assess the applications’ relevance to the purpose of the Finance Market Fund and the Norwegian financial market. The board wants a project portfolio with good scientific and institutional diversification. The board will also consider the triggering effect. Please also note that the Finance Market Fund's rules impose special requirements on dissemination. 

You must account for the consequences of any reduced support. 

Priority will also be given to projects with a woman project manager when the applications are otherwise assessed equally. 

All applications will be assessed by an international referee panel. After the panel assessment has been completed, the applications will be assessed with regard to relevance. The administration then writes a recommendation to the Finance Market Fund's Board of Directors. The board ultimately makes a decision on which projects will receive funding. 

See also: How we process applications.   

We expect to publish which applications will be awarded during week 45 of 2025.