International Collaborative Projects with Russia

The call is open to approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The Project Owner must be an approved Norwegian research organisation. The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the grant application must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council.

Requirements relating to the project manager

There are no special requirements regarding who can serve as the project manager.

Requirements relating to partners

• All research organisations must apply in cooperation with a Russian partner. The Russian partner must seek funding from the RFBR to cover its project costs.
• The Norwegian and Russian researchers are to collaborate on a joint project. In their grant application, the Norwegian researchers must adequately describe the tasks to be carried out by their Russian colleagues and what deliverables are expected, but the grant application is to focus primarily on the tasks to be performed by the Norwegian researchers.
• Other Norwegian research organisations may also participate as partners in the project and receive Research Council funding.
• Any partners from a third country must cover their own project costs.

Under this call, the Research Council may cover up to 100 per cent of the costs incurred by participating Norwegian research organisations that are necessary for the execution of the project. Funding of other project costs must be covered by the research organisations themselves.

In order for the Research Council to calculate its amount of support, the grant application must include an overall project budget for the Norwegian research groups based on the following types of approved project costs:

• Payroll and indirect expenses relating to researcher time (including research fellowships) at the research institutions participating in the project. See here for guidelines for calculating payroll and indirect costs in grant applications to the Research Council.
• Procurement of R&D services. The Project Owner and Norwegian partners may jointly or individually procure R&D services from R&D-performing companies. Suppliers of R&D services for the project are not partners and may not be granted ownership rights to results generated under the project.
• Costs relating to procurement and use of scientific equipment. See here for Research Council guidelines for calculating costs of equipment.
• Other operating expenses, including support for research stays abroad (Personal Overseas Research Grants) and travel expenses and other project-related costs not covered under the categories above.

Conditions for funding

Support from the Research Council is to go to the non-economic activity of research organisations. Companies defined as an “undertaking” in the state aid rules will not be eligible to receive support to cover projects costs under this call.

The Research Council's terms for allocation and disbursal of support for the first year and any pledges and disbursals for subsequent years are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

Professional development plan for post-doctoral research fellows

If the project includes funding for post-doctoral fellowships, a professional development plan must be drawn up for the post-doctoral fellowship period and submitted to the Research Council by at the latest three months after the post-doctoral research fellow is formally employed. The professional development plan must be signed by the employee and the immediate supervisor and it must be updated in connection with any significant changes during the fellowship period. For more information, please see the document “Mandatory professional development plan for post-doctoral research fellows (docx)” and the information on Personal Post-doctoral Fellowships on the Research Council website.

The Project Owner (R&D organisation) is responsible for selecting the archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. The Project Owner must specify the planned solution(s) in connection with the revised grant proposal.

You may revise and resubmit your grant application form multiple times up to the application submission deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have filled in the application form and included all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

The budget in the online grant application form must only include costs for the Norwegian participants. However, in the document “Joint call RCN-RFBR Mandatory attachment” (see below in this call) applicants are to include the total project costs for all parties as well as a description of how these will be financed from both countries.

• The grant application, including all attachments, must be submitted in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• All the templates for attachments are at the end of the call for proposals.
• For all projects, funding must be sought in both Norway and Russia to be eligible for support.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 10 pages using the designated template for this call (found at the bottom of this page).
• Description of relevance of the project to the call, to be uploaded under the attachment type “Other”.
• CV for the project manager using the designated template (found at the bottom of this page), to be uploaded as attachment type “CV”.
• CV for the project manager in Russia, using the designated template, to be uploaded as attachment type “Other”.
• Confirmation from the Norwegian research organisation explaining why the project is important to the organisation. This is to be uploaded as attachment type “Other”.
• Confirmation from the Russian research organisation explaining why the project is important to the organisation. This is to be uploaded as attachment type “Confirmation of partners”.
• The document “Joint call RCN-RFBR Mandatory attachment” (see template at the bottom of this page). This document must specify, among other things, how overall project costs, financing and activities are to be distributed between Norway and Russia. PLEASE NOTE: This document must also be submitted as an attachment in the Russian party’s application to the RFBR. The document must therefore be completed by both the Norwegian and Russian applicants and must be identical. This is to be uploaded as attachment type “Other”.
• For projects encompassing doctoral degree education, a Letter of Intent from the degree-conferring university/institution must be attached to the grant application. This is to be uploaded as attachment type “Other”.

Grant applications that do not satisfy the above requirements will be rejected.

Optional attachments

Proposals for up to three international referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal. Any such proposal is to be uploaded under the attachment type “Referees”.

Links to websites and documents, as well as other attachments than those specified above, will not be included in the application review process. There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments to the application you upload to our system, so please make sure that you upload the correct file corresponding to the selected attachment type.

All grant applications will be assessed by international referee panels. After the panel assessments are completed, the grant applications will be assessed for the strength of bilateral collaboration and relevance relative to the call for proposals. The programme administration will then submit its recommendation to the allocating body. The allocating body is responsible for the final decision regarding the approval or rejection of grant proposals.

All the Russian grant applications will be assessed in accordance with RFBR procedures. Only grant applications that have received a high score from both countries will be considered for support. The Research Council and the RFBR will select projects for funding by consensus after the separate national assessments have been completed.

Disbursement of the grant for Year 1 and honouring of any pledges for subsequent years are contingent on the implementation of the Russian project.