Researcher Project for Early Career (Thematic Call)

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 

Requirements for experience: You must have an approved doctoral degree and between two and seven years must have passed from the date of the public defence to the application deadline. You must have defended your thesis no earlier than 5 March 2018 and no later than 5 March 2023. 

If more than seven years have passed since the date of the public defence, you can apply for a deduction for statutory leave, compulsory military or civilian 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 leave, 
• completed compulsory initial military or civilian service (up to 12 months deducted 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 the granting of 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 date of the defence date. 

In order to grant a deduction, we require that you attach 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, doctor/health service or other public bodies/bodies (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 included. 

We follow the leave rules described in the Working Environment Act, and you can apply for a deduction for leave that you would have been entitled to if you lived in Norway when you were on leave. For example, you can claim a deduction for parental leave in a country where parental leave is not required by law, if you actually had parental leave. The requirement is that you can document the leave as described above. 

• You must work at least 25 percent of a full-time position in the project during the project period. 
• You must be employed in at least 50 per cent of a position by the Project Owner research organisation throughout the project period. You can be employed or become employed in a position as a postdoctoral research fellow, researcher or other academic position. You can, but do not have to, be employed by the Project Owner when you submit the application. 

Requirements relating to partners 

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

• Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see "Who is eligible to apply?" above) or equivalent research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and receive funding under this call. 
• Other types of organisations, including companies and other enterprises, may not be partners in research projects. 
• All partners must enter into a collaboration agreement as part of the contract if you are awarded funding from the Research Council. 

Read more about partners.  

As the Project Owner or partner in the project, you can engage subcontractors to deliver services and contribute to the implementation of certain tasks in the project. Subcontractors cannot be given rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations for public procurement must in the usual way carry out the selection of subcontractors in line with these regulations. You cannot have R&D suppliers in the project. 

One actor cannot have different roles in the project. This means that a subcontractor cannot be the Project Owner or a partner in the project at the same time. 

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 related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions and the project manager's position) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral scholarships, the support is limited to three full-time equivalents. For postdoctoral fellowships, the support is limited to a minimum of three years and a maximum of four years. See our website about post-doctoral research fellowship positions and doctoral research fellowship positions.
• Other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities 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 item Procurement of R&D services cannot 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. Here, the project manager can apply for funding for research stays abroad for research fellows who are part of the project during the project period. Please note that the call for proposals for stays abroad has a number of requirements for who can receive support for the stay abroad.   

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, as well as rates, can be found via the budget information page (see below). 

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

Scope of funding 

Funding of NOK 4–10 million per project is available under this call. 

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

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 

We do not award state aid under this call. This means that the funding should only go to the research organisation’s non-economic activity. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. Our requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of funding 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 What the contract involves.   

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive an award from us: 

• Grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their websites. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects awarded funding from us. 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 application. Here you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from the Research Council.  
• 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 can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the required attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

The application must meet the following requirements: 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English, with the exception of the description of relevance to the topic, which you can write in Norwegian or English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 
• Mandatory attachments must be included. 
• Requirements relating to the Project Manager and the Project Owner must be met. 
• The project must start between 1 October 2025 and 1 April 2026. 
• You must clearly demonstrate that the project is within the priorities described in the topic from which you are applying for funding. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 11 pages. 
• CV for the project manager of maximum four pages. 
• Documentation of deductions if you apply for a deduction for experience we have no separate template for this). The document must be uploaded under "Attachments/Other items" in the application form. 
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. When describing the application's relevance, we recommend that you read the relevant topic text carefully. Uploaded as attachment type "Attachments/Other items". 

Applications that do not meet the requirements above will be rejected. You must use standard templates for all mandatory attachments (except for documentation of deductions). The templates can be found at the bottom of the call. 

Optional attachments 

• CVs for the most important project participants, each of a maximum of four pages. It is mandatory to use the CV template at the bottom of the call. 
  • You will assess which project participants are the most important, and in which cases it will be of importance for the application processing to assess the project participants' qualifications. 
• 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 suggestions, but can use them 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:

We will assess your application as it has been submitted. It is not relevant how an identical or approximately similar application has previously been assessed by us. 

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

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

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 in an online portal for referees who individually assess the criteria Research quality – potential for advancing the research frontier, Research quality – quality in R&D activities, 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 four criteria.    

The panels will assess the applications for open research practice as part of the criterion Impacts and impacts. 

You can read more about the assessment of open science in applications here. 

If the referee panel assesses all criteria for a mark of 5 or higher, the application will also be assessed on the basis of the criterion Relevance to the topic by Research Council case officers. 

The assessment of the five above criteria is then summarised in an overall mark for the application, before the Research Council's administration creates 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.