Support for Networks to Follow Up National Subject Evaluations

Only evaluated administrative units (see the list of administrative units with research groups) in the subject evaluations of natural sciences (EVALNAT), mathematics, ICT and technology (EVALMIT), life sciences (EVALBIOVIT) or medicine and health sciences (EVALMEDHEALTH) can apply on behalf of research groups that participated in one of the evaluations.   

• The Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of evaluated research groups from at least 3 research organisations. 
• Administrative units with 10 or fewer evaluated research groups may submit one application. 
• Administrative units with more than 10 evaluated research groups may submit a maximum of two applications. 

The administrative unit must be part of an approved Norwegian research organisation. See the list of approved research organisations.  

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The administrative unit listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application. 

The application must be a collaboration between evaluated research groups from at least 3 research organisations, and the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all the partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

The project manager 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 (forsker 1), researcher 2 (forsker 2) or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence. 

The project manager must be a permanent employee of the Project Owner's administrative unit, and must be the academic leader of one of the research groups that are part of the network for which you are applying for funding. 

Requirements relating to partners 

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

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. 

You can apply for support for the work of organising the network activities, the costs of preparing and conducting meetings and travel costs associated with meetings. 

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 other research organisations.  
• other operating expenses, which are costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out the project. All costs entered as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.   

The cost types equipment and procurement of R&D services cannot be used.  

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

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

• The Research Council's prerequisites for awards 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 grants 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.  
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets 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 mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

The number of applications that can be submitted per organisation can be found under "Who is eligible to apply?" 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of a maximum of 5 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for the project manager. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for the leaders of collaborating research groups. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 

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

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:

Pre-assessment 

Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

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

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

Administrative assessment 

Applications that meet the formal requirements will be processed administratively by the Research Council. The administration will make an assessment based on the criteria set out in the call and an assessment of relevance based on how well the application addresses the needs described in the national reports from the four subject evaluations.  

The administration prepares a recommendation based on the assessment of the applications and an overall portfolio assessment that takes into account the distribution of networks by subjects and topics.  

The portfolio board for Ground-breaking research then makes a decision regarding funding.  

We expect to publish which applications will be funded during October 2025.