Functioning of the Financial Market and Ethical Awareness – Funding for Research Projects

The call is open to approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the grant application.

Requirements relating to the project manager

To qualify as project manager, individuals must hold an approved doctorate or have obtained qualifications at associate professorship level (in Norwegian only) by the date of the application submission deadline. In this context, employment in the Norwegian research institute sector in a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) is considered equivalent qualification.

Requirements relating to partners

Only other research organisations may participate as partners in the Researcher Project and receive Research Council 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.

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

The following costs may be covered by the Research Council:

• Operating expenses, including procurement of R&D services and costs related to the operation and depreciation of scientific equipment. Please refer to the Research Council’s guidelines for depreciation of equipment.
• For academic positions in the university and university college sector and all doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships in Norway, the amount sought must follow these rates. You may apply for funding to cover the following positions:
  
  • Doctoral research fellowships for up to three years and post-doctoral research fellowships for up to three years. Hiring procedures, employment periods, work duties, education plans, etc., must comply with the regulations concerning terms and conditions of employment for the posts of post-doctoral research fellow, research fellow, research assistant and resident laid down by the Ministry of Education and Research.
  • Academic positions.

Researcher Projects under the Research Council are not open to the allocation of state aid. This means that companies and other undertakings may not be the recipients of project funding. These entities may, however, serve as suppliers of R&D services to the project.

For more information about the state aid rules, see here.

Calculating support

Funding may be sought to cover budgeted project costs. Payroll costs for project partners in Norway must be based on the lump-sum rates for fellowship-holders.

Conditions for support

Companies are not eligible to receive funding to cover projects costs.

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.

Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reports are to be submitted online.

Section 11 item 10 of the rules set out for the Finance Market Fund (in Norwegian only) stipulates special requirements for publishing, among other things.

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 uploaded all mandatory attachments. After the deadline, it is the most recently submitted version of the grant application that will be processed.

• The grant application, including all attachments, may be submitted in Norwegian or English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 10 pages using the designated template which can be found below;
• A CV for the project manager, using the designated template which can be found below;
• CVs for key project participants, using the designated template which can be found below.

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

Optional attachments

• A proposal for up to three referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal.

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 you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.

Grant applications will be assessed on the basis of the following criteria:

It is particularly important that grant applications clearly demonstrate that the activity is of relevance in relation to the purpose of the Finance Market Fund and that the funding provided will promote activity that would not otherwise have taken place.

The grant application must also describe the potential ramifications if the funding amount awarded is smaller than what was originally sought. Please see the rules set out for the Finance Market Fund at www.finansmarkedsfondet.no (in Norwegian only).

The Board of Directors seeks to achieve a broad project portfolio with a wide range of scientific areas and institutions.

All grant applications for Researcher Projects will be assessed by international referee panels. Once the panel assessments are completed, the grant applications will be assessed for relevance to this call. The administration will then submit its recommendation to the Finance Market Fund’s Board of Directors. The board is responsible for the final decisions regarding grant allocations.

Final decisions on allocation of funding are planned to be announced in mid-November 2020.