Centre for Research-based Innovation – SFI V – Phase 1

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply in binding cooperation with partners from other research organisations, trade and industry and the public sector. 

See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations and the definition of public sector.    

Private companies and any public actors shall participate as partners, referred to as user partners. 

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

• The Project Owner must be an approved research organisation. 
• The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved submission of the grant application. 
• The Project Owner (organisation) submits the grant application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

• The project manager (centre director) must document experience from managing large, complex projects. 
• The Project Manager must be employed by the Project Owner or one of the partners. 

Requirements relating to partners 

• The centre's research is to be conducted by research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant actors from Norwegian trade and industry and the public sector. For a more detailed description of collaboration and roles, see the document Requirements and guidelines for industry- or society-oriented research centres.  
• The grant application must reflect the strategic objectives of all partners. 
• The centre must have three or more funding partners that are not research organisations; these are referred to as user partners. It must always be with private companies as user partners. The centre may also have foreign user partners. It must be documented how any foreign user partners will contribute to achieving the centre's goals.   
• All user partners must participate actively in funding and research, and must have a substantial innovation activity of their own and the ability to exploit research results in the development of their activities 
• All partners must actively contribute to the planning, follow-up and dissemination of results from the centre, and to ensuring that new knowledge is utilised. 
• The centre will have a board where the majority of the members and the chairman come from the user partners. 

Scope of funding 

User funding included in the centre may not be used as business funding for other Research Council-funded projects at a later date. This also applies to user financing provided during the centre period. 

• You can apply for funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to carry out the centre's activities. You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the budget on the Research Council's website. 
• You can apply for from NOK 50 to 96 million spread over eight years. 3/8 of the Research Council's funding will not be disbursed until the last three years of the centre period. Funding for the last three years will depend on an assessment by the centre during the project period. 
• The Research Council's total funding may not exceed two times the amount of funding from the user partners. Both cash financing and financing in the form of the user partners' own work effort in the centre (so-called in kind) will be included in the user financing. Experience shows that it is an advantage if there is a certain balance between the proportion of "in kind" and the share of cash financing from user partners. 
• In addition to funding from user partners, the Project Owner and other research partners in the centre may contribute own funding, but this is not a requirement. It is not possible to use funding from other Research Council funded projects as part of the funding from the host institution and research partners. 
• Research stays abroad for PhD candidates at the centre and stays for visiting researchers in Norway must be covered within the framework of the project during the project period. 

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

Conditions for funding 

We will not award state aid under this call. We assume that the research is carried out through effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules: 

"Collaboration between at least two independent parties to exchange knowledge or technology, or to achieve a common objective based on the division of labour, where the parties jointly define the scope of the collaborative project, contribute to its implementation and share its risks, as well as its results. One or more parties may bear all the costs of the project, thereby relieving other parties of financial risk. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration." 

The following guidelines apply: 

• Support to the research organisations in the centre goes to the organisations' non-economic activity. Thus, it does not constitute state aid. The Research Council requires that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 
• Companies will not be eligible to receive support to cover project costs. Business actors and others who are to be regarded as undertakings in the sense of state aid law will not be reimbursed for any of their costs associated with participation in the centre. 
• Rights to project results are to be regulated in such a way that companies participating in the centre do not receive indirect state aid from participating research partners. The regulation of rights must therefore be in line with Section 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority's guidelines on state aid for research and development and innovation. This means that rights to IPR from the project must be allocated to the various partners in a way that adequately reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests. 

The Research Council's requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, are set out in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects,  which can be found in their entirety on the page What the contract involves.  

If you are granted the project, the following must be in place before you enter into a contract with us: 

• 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. 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 us.  
• The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the project's data management plan. 

We will disburse the support in arrears. For more information about funding, see the document "Requirements and guidelines for commercial and social centres", which can be found under "About the call". 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. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 
• Mandatory attachments must be included. 
• Requirements relating to the Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied. 
• Requirements relating to partners must be met. 
• A maximum of ten short CVs can be submitted. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description (maximum 6 pages) 
• Short CV for the project manager (centre director) of maximum 2 pages, using the designated template found at the end of this call. 
• Short CVs for up to nine key persons in the project, of maximum 2 pages, using the designated template found at the end of this call: 
  • Researchers attaching CVs must use the template "Template for CV researchers". 
  • People who are submitting their CV and who do not work at a research organisation can use the template "Template for CV" 
• Letter of intent from registered user partners. The letter of intent must use the designated template found at the end of this call. 
• An overview of the total user funding provided to centres using a fixed template, which can be found at the end of this call. 

Optional attachment 

• Proposals for up to five referees who can be assumed to be impartial to assess the grant application if it progresses to stage 2 of the calls. 

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 assess the grant application in light of the objective of Phase 1 of this two-stage application process for the Research Centres application type. 

In Phase 1, a three-part grading scale will be used for each of the assessment criteria. 

Once we have received the application and the deadline has expired, we will carry out a preliminary check to ensure that all formal requirements are met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

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 "Excellence", "Impact" and "Implementation". The referees will then meet in referee panels to reach a consensus-based assessment of the grant application for each of the three criteria.  Each panel will cover relatively broad disciplines and industry areas. The referees will not have specialist expertise in each individual application that is assessed by the referee panel. 

Grant applications will also be assessed by the Research Council's case officers on the criterion 'Relevance to the call for proposals'. 

Up to 30 applications must be qualified from Phase 1 through to Phase 2. This means that only these applicants will be invited to submit a full application at Phase 2. All other applications for Phase 1 will be rejected. The Research Council bases its decisions in Phase 1 on an overall portfolio assessment by the portfolio board. This portfolio assessment takes into account: 

• applications' assigned marks based on the assessments 
• application dissemination in areas relating to industry, thematic areas and challenges, dissemination of applications across research institutions and regions, and it is desirable to also include applications involving user partners from both the private and public sectors among the up to 30 applications that qualify for Phase 2 
• prioritisation of centres that are complementary to the research centres specified in the call, which are already funded through the Research Council's industry-oriented centre schemes at the time of the decision for Phase 1 

The portfolio board will hold a decision meeting for Phase 1 in December 2024. We will publish the results of the application review process at Phase 1 before Christmas in 2024.