Researcher Project for Technological Convergence Related to Enabling Technologies

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See the list of approved Norwegian 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.

Requirements relating to project managers

You must have an approved doctorate or similar 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) in the institute sector or a health trust, you are also qualified.

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

Requirements relating to partners

Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see a list of such organisations 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, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects.

The Project Owner and/or project partners may hire subcontractors to provide services and carry out R&D services and contribute to individual tasks in the project.

Read more about partners.

A project participant may not be assigned two different roles in the project. This means that a sub-contractor for the project may not have the role of Project Owner or partner in the same project.

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

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 in 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.
• Equipment. This encompasses operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the execution of the project.
• 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 funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may seek funding under that call in the course of the project period for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated to the project.

Scope of funding

The Research Council may provide NOK 12–20 million in funding per project under this call. There are no requirements for own funding, but 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, this must be covered through own funding.

Conditions for funding

The Research Council will not award support that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that the Research Council funding is only to go to the non-economic activity of the research organisations. We require 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 the allocation and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any pledges and payments for subsequent years, are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

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 must meet the following requirements:

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• All mandatory attachments must be included.
• Requirements relating to the project manager and Project Owner (research organisation) must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 1 February 2022 and 1 July 2022.

Applications that do not satisfy the requirements listed above may be rejected.

Mandatory attachments

The designated template found at the end of the call for proposals (the project description template will soon be available) must be used for all attachments.

• A project description, maximum 15 pages.
• A CV for the project manager, maximum four pages.
• CVs of key researchers participating in the project, not exceeding four pages each.

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.

We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. 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:

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 a mark of 7 in the referee panel’s overall assessment will receive funding.

If there are any remaining funds available for distribution, we will give priority to applications awarded a mark of 6 in the overall assessment. For these applications, the mark awarded for Excellence will be given more weight than the marks for Impact and Implementation. If the remaining available funds are not sufficient to fund all applications awarded an overall mark of 6, we will use randomised selection among the applications that have been awarded equal marks.

If there are still funds available after applications awarded an overall mark of 7 and 6 have been recommended, it will be considered whether applications with an overall mark of 5 will be recommended, in accordance with the same principles.

Applications with a woman project manager will be prioritised in the category in question before a randomised selection process is used.

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.