Researcher Project for Young Talents

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations. See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.

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 to the Research Council.

Requirements related to the project manager
Experience requirement: As of the application submission deadline, no less than two years and no more than seven years may have passed since the date of defence of the applicant’s doctoral dissertation for approved doctorates. You must have defended your dissertation no earlier than 6 May 2013 and no later than 6 May 2018.

Age requirement: You must be younger than 40 years old on the date of the application submission deadline, i.e. born on or after 7 May 1980.

The dates given for the requirements for experience and age are fixed even though the submission deadline for grant applications has been postponed to 20 May.

If more than seven years have passed since you defended your dissertation or if you were born before 7 May 1980, you may apply to subtract statutory leaves of absence, compulsory military or civilian service (up to 12 months for each of these) and/or sick leave in accordance with our rules for subtracting time.

• It is not possible to receive funding for a Researcher Project for Young Talents more than once.
• You must dedicate at least 25 per cent of a full-time position to the project for the entire duration of the project period.
• You must be employed for at least 50 per cent of a full-time position by the Project Owner (research organisation) for the entire duration of the project period.

An individual may serve as project manager for only one grant application submitted for a Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal, Researcher Project for Young Talents (this call) or Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility for the 20 May 2020 deadline. If you are the project manager for a Researcher Project, Young Research Talent Project or Mobility Grant that received funding after the deadline 10 April 2019, you may not submit an application for the 20 May 2020 deadline.

There is no restriction on the number of applications on which you may be listed as a partner.

Requirements relating to partners
Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see under “Who is eligible to apply?” above) and corresponding 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, are not eligible to receive support for Researcher Projects and may not be project partners, but they may serve as suppliers of R&D services to the project. In such cases, the intellectual property rights related to the result of the supplier’s work activities will become the property of the institution procuring the services. For companies defined as “undertakings” in the state aid rules, it is particularly important to note that the Research Council does not award state aid under Researcher Projects.

See here for more information about the state aid rules.

A project participant may not be assigned two different roles in the project. This means that a supplier of R&D services for the project may not have the role of Project Owner or partner in the same project.

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

You may seek funding to cover actual costs that are necessary to execute the project. The Project Owner is to obtain information about costs from each project partner. These costs are to be entered into the cost plan under the relevant category.

Support may be granted for the following costs:

• Payroll and indirect expenses, related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations participating in the project. For doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships, this funding is limited to maximum three person-years.
• 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.

If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are concrete plans in place for research stays abroad for the fellowship-holders, the costs of such stays may be included in the grant application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Research Stays Abroad for doctoral and post-doctoral research fellows. During the project period, the project manager may seek funding under that call for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated with the project.

Scope of funding
The Research Council may provide NOK 4–8 million in funding per project under this call. There are no requirements for own financing and the Research Council can therefore provide support for up to 100 per cent of the total approved costs.

Conditions for funding
The Research Council will not award support that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that the Research Council funding must only go to the non-economic activity of the research organisations. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Companies will not be eligible to receive support to cover projects costs and may not receive indirect support through the granting of any rights to project results.

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support for the first year and any pledges for subsequent years are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

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 of Norway has specific requirements and guidelines for prospective registration and disclosure of medical and health related studies involving human participants.

The grant application form must be created and submitted via “My RCN Web”. 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.

Applications that do not satisfy the following requirements will be rejected:

• The grant application, including all attachments, must be submitted in English, except for the description of relevance to the chosen topic in the call, which may be submitted in Norwegian or English.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• Requirements relating to the project manager must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 1 January 2021 and 1 August 2021.
• Funding must be sought from the Research Council for 2021.

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.
• A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages. 
• A description of relevance of the project to the selected topic. This is mandatory for all topics under the call except for Ground-breaking research (FRIPRO). To be uploaded under Attachments/Other items
• Any documentation required to establish time deductions for the age and/or experience requirements, when relevant. To be uploaded under Attachments/Other items

Optional attachments

• CVs for the key project participants. Each CV must not exceed four pages; CVs that exceed the maximum length will not be included in the application review process.
• Applicants themselves are to decide which project participants are most important and in which cases it will be of significance to the review process to assess these participants’ qualifications.

• Applicants are free to propose up to three referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal.
• To ensure impartiality, we do not use referees who have their place of employment in Norway. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed. 

Attachments other than those specified above as mandatory or optional, as well as any links to websites in the grant application, will not be included in the application review process.

Grant applications will be assessed in relation to the following criteria:

See the timeline at the bottom of this page for an overview of the schedule for the various stages of the application processing.

Referee panel review
The administrative procedure described here may be subject to changes due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The referee panel review forms the core of the application processing procedure. All applications for a Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal, Researcher Project for Young Talents and Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility will be assessed by a common set of international referee panels.

Grant applications will be distributed to the panels on the basis of their research content. Your application will be assessed once, by the referees in a single panel, regardless of whether you have selected one or multiple topics for your application.

For each grant application, we check to ensure that the panel has sufficient expertise to review the application’s research topic. When needed, assessments from individual external specialists will be obtained to support the panel in reaching a consensus-based assessment.

All the referees will review each grant application and assign marks for each of the assessment criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation, as well as a mark for overall assessment of the application, prior to having a discussion of the grant applications. The panel reviews the projects and discusses and reaches a consensus on a final mark for each criterion. The referee panel’s mark for overall assessment is assigned based on a discretionary, general review in which each assessment criterion is weighted approximately equally, and the application is considered in light of the primary objective of a Researcher Project for Young Talents. A written explanation of the assessment is drawn up in consensus.

Grant applications that receive a mark of 4 or lower in the overall assessment will not be awarded funding. The applicant will in this case receive feedback consisting of the marks assigned for the individual criteria and overall assessment and the written comments in the overall assessment.

Assessment of the relevance criterion
After the common panel review has concluded, the applications will be assessed in relation to the individual topics set out in the call for proposals.

Grant applications that receive a mark above the threshold value set for the referee panel’s overall assessment will be assessed for relevance in relation to the topic(s) selected by the applicant. Applications will be separately reviewed for relevance to each topic selected by the applicant. Grant applications under Ground-breaking research (FRIPRO) will not be assessed for relevance to this as a topic. 

The assessment of the relevance criterion is based on the priorities set out in the call for proposals for a specific topic. The review is based on the project description, the referee panel’s assessment of the application and the attachment to the grant application in which the applicant has described the relevance of the project.

Ranking of grant applications
The elements to be stressed when establishing the order of priority between projects will be described under each topic under the heading “Prioritisation of grant applications”. The Research Council uses this to draw up a recommendation for the portfolio board on which applications to fund. The portfolio board is responsible for taking the final funding decisions. We often provide the portfolio board with alternative suggested rankings to make it easier to choose which considerations to emphasise within the available budget and the priorities set out in the call for proposals. Applications that target multiple topics may be included in the list of rankings submitted to multiple portfolio boards, but will only be granted a single funding award.

Please note that the amount of funding announced, overall and per individual topic, represents the estimated amount of funding available. The final amounts allocated may deviate somewhat from these estimates. This may be due to changes in the financial framework or to the number and quality of grant applications received viewed in light of other calls for proposals.