Competence-building Project for Industry

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved 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 application to the Research Council. The application must be strategically anchored with the Project Owner. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

You can only serve as project manager for one application submitted for the deadline of 5 March 2025. This means that if you are the project manager for an application under this call, you cannot serve as the project manager for applications for any of the other calls with a deadline of 5 March 2025.

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 from the industry sector (see the guidelines for definition) who provide cash financing for the project. The cash financing must be confirmed in a letter of intent. 
  The application must be strategically supported by all partners. They must also confirm this in a letter of intent. 
• The Project Owner and the partners must carry out the project in effective collaboration. See definition in the guide. 
• 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.  
• A project participant may not have multiple roles in the project, for example as a partner and subcontractor. 
• Partners who are not research organisations cannot lead the project or major tasks. 
• 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. 

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, (including research fellowships). For doctoral research fellowships, support is limited to a maximum of three full-time equivalents, and for postdoctoral fellowships, support may be awarded for three to four years. See our website about post-doctoral research fellowship positions and doctoral research fellowship positions.
• Equipment, which includes operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary to carry out the project. 
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities necessary to carry out the project. Purchases from subcontractors must be specified.   

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, or if there are specific plans for visiting researchers or stays abroad for researchers in the project, this may be included in the application. The rules for such stays and information about rates can be found on the budget information page (see link below).

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

Scope of support 

• The Research Council's support for the project can be up to four times the Norwegian industry partners' cash contributions, both in total and on an annual basis. 
• The minimum amount is stated at the top of this call. A possible maximum amount is described under the individual topics. 
• Cash financing from foreign industry partners (including Norwegian-registered foreign enterprises) or public administration will not count as part of the cash financing requirement. 

The Research Council does not award state aid under this call. This means that funding from the Research Council can only finance the research organisations' project costs. 

We do not cover the costs of partners that are not research organisations, whether they are Norwegian or foreign. These costs must therefore be kept out of the budget tables. However, you must describe the activities they will carry out, as well as their costs, in the project description under section 3.2. 

Costs incurred by foreign partners 

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

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 organisation (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 

• The 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 assumes that the necessary accounting separation between the organisation's economic and non-economic activities is in place 
• 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: 

• The Project Owner must establish collaboration agreements with the partners in the project, both Norwegian and foreign. The collaboration agreements are intended to regulate mutual rights and obligations and ensure the integrity and independence of research. The collaboration agreements must also ensure that no collaborating undertaking receives indirect support from the Project Owner or partners. The collaboration agreements must therefore contain conditions that ensure compliance with Section 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority's guidelines on state aid for research and development.  
• If the project has PhD and postdoctoral research fellowships where the responsible university or university college does not participate in the application, you must also have a collaboration agreement with the responsible/degree-conferring institution. 
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and managed any issue of research security in the project. Research security refers to the risks related to undesirable transfer of knowledge and technology, malign influence on research and innovation or violations of research ethics or integrity, where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values. 
• From 2022, research organisations that receive grants (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their websites. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, 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 application. Here you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data that is generated during the project. 
  For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results.  

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. 

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 1.10.2025 and 1.4.2026. Projects that have received a decision on funding, but that do not start during this period, may lose their funding. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of maximum 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. You decide which project participants are the most important. 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. See sample letter of intent on our guide page. The cash contribution from business actors must be specified in the letter of intent. Cash contributions that are listed in the project budget, but not specified in the letter of intent, will not be included when we assess the application.  
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. Uploaded as attachment type "Other" 

You must use standard templates for all required attachments. The templates can be found at the bottom of the call. 

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Grant applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements or requirements relating to the Project Owner and 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 do any technical validation on the content of the attachments you upload, so make 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 must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation.

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

We will assess 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. 

The Research Council of Norway may reject applications where the Project Owner or any partner has significantly breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council within the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been convicted of misconduct by the Joint Integrity Committee or the Investigation Committee in the last two years prior to the submitted application. 

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 the referee panel assesses all criteria for a mark of 4 or higher, the application will also be assessed on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the chosen topic" by the Research Council's case officers. 

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 Research Council will fund projects that will contribute on the road to a low-emission society in line with the Paris Agreement. In cases where two projects have received otherwise equal assessments, the portfolio board will prioritise the project that is most sustainable in terms of effects on climate, the environment and society.

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 administrative procedure for Collaborative and Knowledge-building Projects.