Knowledge-building Project for Industry

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for the list of approved Norwegian 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 grant application to the Research Council. The grant application must reflect the strategic objectives of 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 relating to collaboration and roles in the project 

• The project must involve at least two Norwegian partners from the industry sector (see the guidelines for definition) that provide cash financing for the project.
• The grant application must reflect the strategic objectives of all partners. They will also confirm this in the letters of intent.  
• The Project Owner and partners are to carry out the project through effective collaboration. See definition in the guide. 
• In principle, the Project Owner or partners may not be in a relationship of dependency, for example through a group relationship, with a subcontractor in the project. They must operate at arm's length from these.  The Project Owner and partners must also be independent of each other. This means that one cannot have controlling influence over the other. This applies both between the Project Owner and the partner, and between all partners. Read more about such dependencies here. 
• A project participant may not have multiple roles in the project, for example as partner or subcontractor. 
• Partners that are not research organisations are not to lead the project or major tasks. 
• The project must have a steering group or reference group comprising the partners. 
• The project cannot be commissioned research. In the grant application, you must describe how the expertise developed under the project can be of benefit to larger user groups.  

The Research Council will not award state aid under this call. This means that funding from the Research Council may only be used to finance the research organisations' project costs, and that the results from the project must be widely disseminated and benefit other actors. A plan for dissemination of the results must be described in the grant application. 

The costs of partners that are not research organisations, both Norwegian and foreign, must be excluded from the budget tables. The activities they will perform, as well as their own financed costs, must nevertheless be described in the project description, under section 3.2. 

Scope of funding 

• Business partners must cover at least 20 per cent of the project's total costs in the form of cash contributions, both in total and on an annual basis. The cash financing must be confirmed in letters of intent. 
• You must apply for at least four million NOK from the Research Council. 
• Cash financing from foreign business partners (including Norwegian-registered foreign enterprises) or general government will not count as part of the contact financing requirement. 

The following cost types should be used: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowships) at the research organisations. 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.  
• 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. 

Note that the cost type Procurement of R&D services should not be used.  

If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are specific plans for research stays abroad for these, this may be included in the application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellows. Here, the project manager can apply for funding for research stays abroad for research fellows participating in the project during the project period. Please note that the separate call for proposals sets out a number of requirements regarding who is eligible for support for the stay abroad  

If there are specific plans for visiting researcher stays or stays abroad for researchers participating 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 the budget should contain.  

Costs incurred by international partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover costs incurred by the international research organisations. See Calculating payroll and indirect expenses in the university and university college sector.   

We cannot cover the costs of other international partners. These costs must therefore be excluded from the budget tables. The activities they will perform, as well as their costs, must nevertheless be described in the project description (under section 3.2). 

Conditions for funding 

Support awarded to the research organisations must only go to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research. Thus, it does not constitute state aid. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 

We require annual project account reports documenting incurred project costs and their financing. The Research Council's Assumptions for allocation and payment of support are specified in our General term for R&D projects.   

If the project is awarded funding, the following must be in place when you revise the grant application: 

• The Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreements with the project partners, both Norwegian and foreign. The collaboration agreements are intended to regulate reciprocal rights and obligations and to safeguard the integrity and independence of research. The collaboration agreements are also to ensure that no partner undertaking receives indirect state aid from the Project Owner or partners. The collaboration agreement shall therefore contain conditions that ensure compliance  with Section 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority's guidelines on state aid for research and development and development and development.  
• If the project involves PhD and post-doctoral research fellowships where the responsible university and university college institution is not participating in the application, you must also have a collaboration agreement with the responsible/degree-conferring institution. 
• From 2022, research organisations that receive funding (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website.   
• 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 grant application. Here you will find more information about requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from the Research Council.  
• The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. 

Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution's accounts will be covered. All reporting shall 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 will process.  

• The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in English, with the exception of the attachment to the relevance report, 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 2024 and 1 April 2025. Projects that have been approved for allocation, but do not start during this period, may lose their allocation. 
• You must clearly demonstrate that the project meets the priorities described in the topic from which funding is being sought. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of maximum 11 pages You must use the 2024 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 partners. See an example of a letter of intent on our guide. The cash contribution from industry actors must be specified in the letter of intent. Cash contributions entered in the project budget, but not specified in the letter of intent, will not be included in the assessment of grant applications.  
• Description of relevance on a maximum of one page. When describing the application's relevance, we recommend that you read the relevant thematic text carefully. Uploaded as attachment type "Other".  

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

All requirements set out in the call must be met. Grant applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements, 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 perform any technical validation on the contents of the attachments you upload, so be sure to upload the correct file for the correct attachment type.  

Optional attachment 

Please enclose proposals for up to three experts (or academic communities) who you believe have the competence to assess the application, or a brief description of the competence that you believe will be suitable for assessing it. We are not obliged to use the suggestions, but can use them when necessary. We encourage gender balance in the proposals. 

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

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

We will consider your application as it has been submitted. 

Once the grant applications have been received, the Research Council will first check that all formal requirements have been met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

In addition, grant applications that fall outside the thematic delimitations set out in the call will be rejected. Decisions to this effect are made by the individual portfolio boards. 

Where the formal requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available in an online portal for experts who individually assess the criteria "research quality", "impact and impact" and "implementation". The referees will then meet in thematic referee panels to reach a consensus-based assessment of the grant application for each of the three criteria. 

If all of the referee panel's assessment of all criteria is 4 or higher, the application will also be assessed by the Research Council's case officers on the basis of the criterion 'Relevance to the call for proposals'. The assessment and marks for all four criteria will be consolidated into an overall mark that indicates the merit of the application. 

The Research Council also bases its decisions by the portfolio boards on an overall portfolio assessment. This takes into account:  

• the applications' assigned marks based on the assessments. 
• the distribution of projects according to priority areas set out in the thematic area. 
• the relationship between grant applications within other calls within the same thematic area. 
• any changes in the ministries' financial or scientific framework for the award. 

Other considerations will also be taken into account by the portfolio boards under each thematic area. 

As a general rule, the portfolio board will hold resolution meetings before summer 2024. We will publish the results of the application review process after these meetings. 

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

See also: How we process applications.