COVID-19 Emergency Call for Proposals: Collaborative and Knowledge-building Projects for the Fight Against Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19)

Approved Norwegian research organisations may apply in cooperation with the public and/or private sectors, other public entities and/or private organisations. Stakeholders from outside the research sector may be municipalities, companies, special interest organisations and others. See guide for applicants.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The research organisation is to be entered as the Project Owner in the application form, and must have authorised the submission of the grant application.

Requirements relating to the project manager

To qualify as project manager, you must have an approved doctorate or equivalent qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline.

If you do not have an approved doctorate but are qualified at associate professorship level or have current or previous employment in the Norwegian research institute sector or a health trust in a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher), you are also qualified.

Requirements relating to collaboration partners

You may apply in cooperation with the public and/or private sectors, other public entities and/or private organisations. Stakeholders from outside the research sector may be municipalities, companies, special interest organisations and others. We also encourage international cooperation with relevant international research institutions. See guide for applicants.

Please see the webpage on “What to enter in the project budget” for details and important information.

The following costs can be covered by the Research Council:

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations participating in the project.
• Procurement of R&D services. The Project Owner and partners may purchase R&D-related services from public and private suppliers individually or together.
• Equipment. This encompasses operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the execution of the project.
• Other operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out R&D efforts under the project.

Conditions for funding

Research Council funding is only to go to the non-economic activity of the research organisations in the form of independent research. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities.

According to the state aid rules, support to an undertaking constitutes state aid. An “undertaking” in this context is defined as any actor that carries out an economic activity consisting of offering products or services on a given market. When an undertaking receives support to cover a portion of its project costs as a partner in the project, this support must be awarded in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014).

The state aid rules set clear limitations on the aid intensity that may be granted to these companies, depending on enterprise size and the type of activity to be carried out. Projects recommended for funding will be required to provide additional information about the project and the project partners to ensure that the project is carried out in compliance with state aid rules.
The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration as defined in the state aid rules. Effective collaboration is defined as follows:

“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 several parties may bear the full costs of the project and thus relieve other parties of its financial risks. Contract research and provision of research services are not considered forms of collaboration.”

The Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreements (contracts) with all of the Norwegian and international partners in the project. The collaboration agreements regulate the reciprocal rights and obligations of the partners and safeguard the integrity and autonomy of the research. The collaboration agreement is to ensure that no participating undertaking receives indirect state aid from a research organisation serving as the Project Owner or partner. The agreement must therefore include conditions for the collaboration which ensure compliance with paragraph 28 of the EFTA guidelines for state aid for research and development and innovation.

"Where collaboration projects are carried out jointly by undertakings and research organisations or research infrastructures, the Authority considers that no indirect State aid is awarded to the participating undertakings through those entities due to favorable conditions of the collaboration if one of the following conditions is fulfilled:

b) the results of the collaboration which do not give rise to IPR may be widely disseminated and any IPR resulting from the activities of research organisations or research infrastructures are fully allocated to those entities; or
c) any IPR resulting from the project, as well as related access rights are allocated to the different collaboration partners in a manner which adequately reflects their work packages, contributions and respective interests; or
d) the research organisations or research infrastructures receive compensation equivalent to the market price for the IPR which result from their activities and are assigned to the participating undertakings, or to which participating undertakings are allocated access rights. The absolute amount of the value of any contribution, both financial and non-financial, of the participating undertakings to the costs of the research organisations or research infrastructures' activities that resulted in the IPR concerned, may be deducted from that compensation."

The Project Owner (research 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.

The Research Council has special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results for medical and health-related studies involving human participants.

• The grant application, including all attachments, must be submitted in English.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• The Research Council may provide NOK 1 000 000-5 000 000 in funding per project under this call. Each applicant must provide at least 20 % own funding.
• The duration of the project must not exceed 24 months.
• The project must start as early as possible, at the latest 1 July 2020.

Attachments

The designated templates must be used. They will be found at the end of the call for proposals.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description, maximum 11 pages. Use the designated template, which can be found below.
• A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages. Use the designated template, which can be found below.

Optional attachments

• CVs for the key project participants, maximum four pages per CV. Use the designated template, which can be found below.

Grant proposals will be assessed on the basis of these criteria:

Once the grant applications have been received, the Research Council will conduct a preliminary administrative review to ensure that they satisfy all the stipulated formal requirements. Grant applications that do not comply with the requirements will be rejected.

Grant applications that satisfy the formal requirements will be distributed to individual external specialists with expertise in the relevant thematic areas and disciplines. For each grant application, we check to ensure that the referees/specialists meet requirements relating to impartiality and has sufficient expertise to review the application’s research topic. The specialists will assess the three criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation, and will assign a mark for each of these criteria, in addition to an overall mark for the application.

After the individual external specialist reviews, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the relevance criterion. Applications that receive an overall mark of 4 or lower from the specialists will not be eligible for funding and will therefore not be assessed in relation to relevance.

The Research Council will draw up a recommendation on which applications to fund based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio. The final decision on funding awards will be taken by the portfolio board.

The project portfolio assessment will take the following factors into account:

• The grant applications’ overall and individual marks;
• The grant applications' relevance to the call;
• Assuming all factors relating to scientific merit and relevance are essentially equal, priority will be given to projects led by women project managers.
• The thematic distribution, i.e. the distribution of proposed projects in relation to priorities set for the relevant topic;
• Any changes in the financial or scientific framework set by the ministries.

The meeting of the portfolio boards will be held in mid-April. The final funding decision will be announced after the meeting.

State aid

This call for proposals constitutes a funding scheme that is notified to the EFTA Surveillance Authority. Funding awarded under this scheme is granted in accordance with Article 25 of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid (Commission Regulation (EU) No 651/2014 of 17 June 2014). This funding scheme is to be practised in compliance with the EEA state aid rules. This means that conditions and concepts are to be interpreted in keeping with corresponding conditions and concepts in the state aid rules. In the event of conflict between the text of the call and the state aid rules, the latter will have precedence. The text of the call may be adjusted for this same reason. This call is approved as a funding scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) in aid reference 32/2019/R&D&I under the General Block Exemption Regulation.