Large-scale Interdisciplinary Researcher Project on the Climate and Earth System

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for the list of approved Norwegian 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 grant application to the Research Council. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

You must have an approved doctorate or equivalent qualification before the application deadline. 

If you do not have an approved doctorate, but have associate professor qualifications or are employed as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or senior researcher in the institute sector or a health trust, you are also eligible to apply. 

Requirements relating to partners 

Projects must be interdisciplinary and include collaboration between researchers from different disciplines. If the collaboration is between researchers at different institutions, the institutions must be listed as partners. Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see under 'Who is eligible to apply?' above) and equivalent research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and to receive Researcher Project funding. 

Other types of organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects. 

Read more about partners.  

As Project Owner and/or partner in the project, you can engage subcontractors to provide services and contribute to the implementation of certain tasks in the project. Subcontractors may not be granted rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations for public procurement must in the normal manner carry out the selection of subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. You may not have suppliers of R&D services in the project.  

A project participant may not have two different roles in the project. This means that a sub-contractor may not serve as Project Owner or partner in the project at the same time.

You can apply for funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner is to obtain information about costs from the project partners. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant cost category. 

The grant application requires you to break down the project budget into the following cost categories: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowships and the position of project manager) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral research fellowships, support is limited to a maximum of three full-time equivalents. For postdoctoral fellowships, support is limited to a minimum of three years and a maximum of 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 that are necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here, and if the purchase exceeds NOK 100,000, it must be specified. Otherwise, all costs you enter as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application.  

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 Post-doctoral Research Fellows. 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.  

Scope of funding 

The Research Council may provide NOK 12–25 million in funding per project under this call. 

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

Conditions for funding 

We will not award state aid under this call. This means that the funding should only go to their non-economic activity. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. Our requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support 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.  

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

• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) available on their website. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects awarded funding from the Research Council. 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 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. 
• For medical and health-related studies involving human participants, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for registration and disclosure of medical and health-related studies involving human participants. 

The application must be created and submitted via "My RCN Web". 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 last that we will process. 

The application must meet the following requirements: 

• The grant application and all attachments must be submitted in English, with the exception of the description of relevance to the topic, which may be submitted in Norwegian or English. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 
• Mandatory attachments must be included. 
• Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied. 
• The project must start between 01.10.2024 and 01.04.2025. 
• You must clearly demonstrate that the project meets the priorities described in the topic from which funding is being sought. 
• The application may be rejected if it does not meet the requirements in the list above. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description 
• CV for the project manager 
• 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". 

Applications that do not satisfy the above requirements will be rejected. You must use default templates for all required attachments.  The templates can be found at the end of the call.  

Optional attachments 

• CVs for the key project participants, maximum four pages each. It is mandatory to use the CV template at the end of the call. 
• You will assess which project participants are the most important, and in which cases it will be of significance for the application review process to assess the qualifications of the project participants. 
• If you wish, you can attach a brief description of competence or proposals for up to three peers you believe will be suitable for assessing your application. We are under no obligation to use the suggestions, but can use them when necessary. 

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We will 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. 

We will consider your application as it has been submitted, and cannot take into account how an equal or approximately the same application has been assessed previously by us. 

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

In brief, the process is as follows: Once the applications have been received, the Research Council will first carry out a preliminary assessment to check that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements may be rejected. 

The applications will then be distributed to thematic referee panels for an assessment of the criteria Research quality – potential to advance the state-of-the-art, Research quality – quality in R&D activities, Impacts and Implementation.  

From 2023, referees will assess applications for Researcher Projects on Open Research Practice as part of the impact and impact criterion. On this website you will find more information about the assessment of open research in grant applications.  

After the panel has completed its assessment, we will assess the application's relevance to the call. The Research Council also bases its decisions by the portfolio boards on an overall portfolio assessment. This takes into account the following factors:  

• The applications' assigned marks based on the assessments. 
• A good distribution of projects in accordance with priority areas set out in the thematic area. 
• The relationship between the number of applications and the quality of the applications within the same topic in other calls for proposals in 2024. 
• Any changes in the ministries' financial or scientific framework for the award. 
• Priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the grant applications are otherwise considered to be on a par. 

See also: How we process applications.