Collaborative Project for Technological Convergence Related to Enabling Technologies

The call is open to approved research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, trade and industry and/or other private organisations.

See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the grant application must have approved the submission of the grant application to the Research Council. The application must be aligned with the Project Owner’s strategies.

Requirements relating to project managers

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 a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher), you are also qualified. The roles of project manager and project administrator in the project may not be filled by the same individual.

You can only be the project manager for one application submitted under this call or the call ‘Researcher Project for Technological Convergence related to Enabling Technologies’; the submission deadline is 15 September 2021 for both calls.

Requirements relating to partners

• Projects are to be carried out by one or more research organisations in binding cooperation with relevant actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, Norwegian trade and industry and/or other private organisations.
• The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners.
• The project must involve at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations.
• All project partners are required to take active part in planning and following up the project as well as in disseminating project results and promoting the utilisation of new knowledge.
• The project proposal must describe how the knowledge developed under the project will be of benefit to wider user groups. The project must not involve contract research carried out for individual companies.
• Projects are to have a steering committee or reference group comprising representatives from the project partners.
• Effective collaboration entails real and practical collaboration between the involved research groups and project partners. The partners’ overall contributions in the form of personnel and, if relevant, other project costs are to constitute at least 10 per cent of the project’s total costs. Cash contributions are not expected, and such contributions cannot compensate for the partners’ required share of the project costs.
• Companies from outside Norway may participate as partners in the project. Any costs to be incurred by collaborating companies from outside Norway that are not research organisations are not to be entered into the budget, and will not be included as part of the minimum requirement for partners’ participation. See the guide for more information about partners from outside Norway.

A project participant may not be assigned more than one role in the project.

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.

Applicants may seek funding to cover actual costs that are necessary for the execution of the project. If our rates for research time in the university and university college sector do not cover all costs associated with a researcher or recruitment position, the Research Council requires the applicant to contribute some own funding. Costs to be incurred by project partners are to be entered into the budget in the same way as costs to be incurred by the Project Owner. When the Research Council’s funding is used to cover project partners’ costs, the state aid rules set out certain limitations relating to the undertakings involved.

Any costs to be incurred by collaborating companies from outside Norway that are research organisations are to be entered in the budget and can be covered by the Research Council's grant. Any costs to be incurred by other actors from outside Norway are not to be entered in the budget. They cannot receive funding, but they can provide services to the project on assignment. Non-Norwegian actors’ role in the project and the costs they are to incur must be clearly described in the project description (section 3.2). See also the Guide for Applicants for more information about project participation by non-Norwegian partners.

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, funding for these stays may be included in the grant application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may seek funding under that call if plans for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated with the project emerge later in the project period. Learn more about the scheme on our web page Research Stays Abroad.

Conditions for funding

The 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.

The project is to be implemented by means of effective collaboration, as defined in the state aid rules.

This call for proposals constitutes a funding scheme that is notified to the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA). Companies serving as partners may have parts of their project costs covered in accordance with the General Block Exemption Regulation Article 25 (Commission Regulation (EU) No. 651/2014). See the consolidated version of the General Block Exemption Regulation for state aid with amendments from July 2020. This funding scheme must be practised in compliance with the EEA state aid rules, which 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 the same reason.

The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by The EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference: GBER 69/2021/R&D&I. 

The state aid rules set clear limits for the percentage of funding that undertakings are allowed to receive, depending on their size and the type of activities they undertake. Project applications that are granted funding must submit further information about the project and partners to ensure that the project is undertaken in accordance with the rules.

If the project is awarded funding, the Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreements with all of the Norwegian and international partners in the project. The collaboration agreement is to regulate the reciprocal rights and obligations of the Project Owner and partners in the project and ensure the integrity and independence of the research. It is also to ensure that no participating undertaking receives indirect state aid from a research organisation serving as Project Owner or from partners. The agreement must therefore include terms and conditions which ensure compliance with State aid for research and development and innovation (eftasurv.int).

The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of support are set out in the General terms and Conditions for R&D Projects. Projects awarded funding under this call are required to submit an annual project account report documenting incurred project costs and their financing.

The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific articles; see Plan S – open access to publications.

Research data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The Project Owner organisation of projects that process data must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application.

The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. 

Applications 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.

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• The project description must use the designated template which is available for download at the end of the call.
• Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the partners must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 1 February 2022 and 1 July 2022. Projects approved for funding that have not started within this period may lose their allocation.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 15 pages using the designated template found at the end of this call.
• CVs (maximum four pages each) for the project manager and key project participants/work package leaders using the designated templates found at the end of this call.
• Letters of Intent from all partners listed. The letter must explain why the research project is important, and describe the planned contributions to the project.

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

Optional attachment

Applicants are free to propose up to three referees who are presumed to be impartial and qualified to review the grant proposal. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees, but may use them as needed.

Attachments other than the mandatory attachments specified above, 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 on the basis of the following criteria:

Preliminary administrative review

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. Applications that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected.

Panel assessment

The applications are divided between referee panels, and for each individual application, the Research Council will check that the panel is impartial and has sufficient expertise to assess the research topic in question. Extra assessments from external specialists will be obtained in connection with some applications to support the panel in reaching a consensus-based assessment.

The referee panel has a meeting to reach a final consensus-based mark for the assessment criteria and overall assessment, and prepare consensus-based written assessments. The referees will also be given the calls for proposals, and the referee panel will assess the relevance to the call as an integrated part of the evaluation of the applications.

The administration will then write a recommendation to the granting authority, which is the Portfolio Board for Enabling Technologies.

Prioritising applications for grants

All applications that are awarded an overall mark of 7 will receive funding. For applications awarded an overall mark of 6 or 5, the mark awarded for Excellence will be given more weight than the marks for Impact and Implementation. Priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.

Please note that the amount announced in the call is an estimate of available funding. The final amount of funding granted may therefore deviate somewhat from this estimate. We will take account of any changes in the financial or scientific framework set by the ministries.

We aim to review the applications in a meeting of the portfolio board in December. The outcome of the review process will be published on our website after this meeting.

See also: Processing applications.