Collaborative Project to Meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges

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

See the list of  approved Norwegian research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner

The Project Owner must be a Norwegian research organisation approved by the Research Council (see above).

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

Requirements relating to project managers

There are no formal requirements for the project manager’s qualifications, but the project manager must document knowledge and expertise in the relevant field and in project management. Peer reviewers will assess the project manager’s professional expertise and suitability.

You can only be the project manager for one application submitted for either a Collaborative Project to meet Societal and Industry-related Challenges (this call), a Knowledge-building Project for Industry (deadline of 15 February 2023), a Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal or a Researcher Project for Young Talents (application deadline of 8 February 2023 for the two latter).

Requirements relating to partners

Projects are to be carried out by one or more research organisations in effective cooperation with relevant actors from public sector entities, non-governmental organisations, the industry sector and/or other private organisations.

• The project must have at least two Norwegian partners that are not research organisations (see the guide for a definition). These must be partners from the industry sector or other parts of society that will contribute their experience and knowledge and ensure that the project and its objectives address real societal and/or industry-related challenges.
• The project must be carried out in effective collaboration, which means that all partners must actively contribute to the planning and follow-up of the project. Everyone must also contribute to spreading the results and ensuring that new knowledge is used.
• It is required that minimum 10 percent of the project total costs must be used by the partners in the project. The guide describes this as the ‘participation requirement’.
• The grant application must describe how the project incorporates the strategic objectives of all the partners. This must be confirmed in the Letters of Intent.
• The project must have a steering group or reference group which includes partners that represent the industry-related or societal challenge.
• The project must not involve contract research. The project proposal must describe how the knowledge developed in the project will be of benefit to wider user groups.

One and the same project participant may not be assigned more than one role, for example as Project Owner and partner or subcontractor, in the same project.

Scope of funding

The minimum amount of funding that may be sought is NOK 4 million. Any maximum amounts are described under the respective topics. The projects may last from two to four years.

You can apply for funding to cover the costs necessary to carry out 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.

The following cost categories must be used:

• Payroll and indirect expenses related to researcher time (including research fellowship positions) at the research organisations, and the partners’ personnel hours. For doctoral research fellowships, funding is limited to a maximum of three man-years. For postdoctoral fellowships, funding may be granted for two to four years.
• Equipment, encompassing operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary for the implementation of the project.
• Other operating expenses, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to implement the project. Procurements from subcontractors must be specified.

Do not use the item Procurement of R&D services.

You will find important and more detailed information about what to enter in the project budget on the Research Council’s website.

The costs of Norwegian partners

As described under the section ‘Requirements relating to partners’, at least 10 percent of the total costs must be used by those representing the industry-related or societal challenge in the project. This can be in the form of payroll expenses or other project costs.

If it is planned that a significantly larger share of the costs is consumed by the partners than the requirement dictates (for example more than 20–30 percent), then you must describe how these activities contribute to developing new knowledge and building research competence (basic research and/or industrial research), which benefits broad sections of society.

The Research Council’s funding can be used to finance, in part or in full, the costs of the Project Owner and partners who are registered in the Norwegian Business Register and have economic activity in Norway. The participants are of course free to fund their own costs in the project. Please note that some topics may entail priorities which indicate that this should be done.

The state aid rules impose certain restrictions on funding for partners that are undertakings. The level of support (aid intensity) permitted will depend on the undertaking’s size and the type of activity that is carried out (basic research or industrial research). If the application is recommended for funding, we will request more information to ensure that our allocation is in accordance with the state aid rules.

The costs of international partners

The Research Council’s funding can be used to finance the costs of international research organisations. See Calculating payroll and indirect expenses for the university and university college sector.

The costs of other international partners will not be funded through the allocations to the project. These costs must be excluded from the budget tables. The activities these partners will perform, as well as any self-funded activities, should be described in the project description (under section 3.2).

Conditions for funding

• The funding allocated to research organisations is only to go to their non-economic activity in the form of independent research. It does not therefore constitute state aid. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non­economic activities.
• The call for proposals has been approved as an aid scheme by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA) with the reference: GBER xx/xx/RDI. 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). 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.
• State aid may not be given to an undertaking that is subject to an outstanding recovery order following a formal decision by the EFTA Surveillance Authority or the European Commission stating that state aid received is illegal and incompatible with the internal market. Nor can the Research Council award state aid to an enterprise that is defined as an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ under the state aid rules, unless the undertaking was not in difficulty as of 31 December 2019, but became an undertaking in difficulty in the period 1 January 2020 – 30 June 2021. It may in such case receive funding.
• We assume that the research will be carried out in effective collaboration as defined in our General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.
• You are required to submit an annual project account report documenting incurred project costs and their financing. The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocation and disbursement of funding are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects.

If your project is granted funding, the following must be in place when you revise your grant application:

• The Project Owner is to draw up collaboration agreements with all 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 conditions for the collaboration which ensure compliance with Section 28 of the EFTA Surveillance Authority’s guidelines for state aid for research and development and innovation.
• If the project involves PhD and postdoctoral fellows whose responsible university/university college institution is not participating in the application, you must also have a collaboration agreement with the responsible/degree-conferring institution.
• From 2022, all grant recipients that are research organisations or public sector bodies (Project Owners and partners) must have a Gender Equality Plan (GEP)available on their website. This must be in place when they sign the grant agreement for projects awarded funding from the Research Council. The requirement does not apply to the industry sector, special interest organisations or the non-profit sector.
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access to scientific publications; see Plan S – open access to publications.
• You must prepare a data management plan for any research data handled in the project. The data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The Project Owner is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project.
• For medical and health-related studies involving human participants, the Research Council stipulates special requirements and guidelines for registration and disclosure of medical and health-related studies involving human participants.

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

• The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
• All mandatory attachments must be included. Attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
• Requirements relating to the Project Owner (research organisation) and project manager must be satisfied.
• Requirements relating to the partners must be satisfied.
• The project must start between 1 July 2023 and 1 December 2023. Projects approved for funding that have not started within this period may lose their allocation.

Mandatory attachments

• A project description of maximum 11 pages using the designated template found at the end of this call. You must use the template for 2023.
• CVs of the project manager and key project participants not exceeding four pages each. The CV templates at the end of the call must be used. 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. Project participants who are researchers should use the CV template called "Template for CV researchers". Other project participants should use the CV template called "Template for CV".
• Letters of Intent from all registered research organisations participating as partners.
• Letters of Intent from all registered partners that contribute from the perspective of the industry sector or other part of society.
  • Please see an example of a letter of intent in our Guide for Applicants.

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

Optional attachments

Applicants are free to enclose a short description of qualifications or propose up to three referees who are presumed to be qualified to review their grant proposal. The Research Council is not under any obligation to use the proposed referees but may use them as needed. We encourage gender balance in the proposals.

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.

All attachments to grant applications must be submitted together with the application form. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application submission deadline unless we have requested additional documentation.

We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria:

Your grant application will be assessed as submitted. We cannot take into account how an identical or similar grant application has been assessed previously.

You can read more about the application review process for Collaborative and Knowledge-building Project on the Research Council’s website.

In summary, the process is as follows: 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. The applications will then be distributed to thematic referee panels to be assessed in relation to the criteria Excellence, Impact and Implementation. After the panel has completed its assessment, the Research Council will conduct an assessment of the application’s relevance to the call.

The portfolio boards’ decisions are also based on an overall assessment of the project portfolio. The portfolio assessment takes the following factors into account:

• The applications’ assigned marks based on the assessments.
• The distribution of projects in relation to priorities set out for the specific topic.
• Connections between grant applications received under other calls within the same
• thematic area.
• Any changes in the financial or scientific framework set by the ministries.
• Priority will be given to projects led by women project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.

The decision meetings of the portfolio boards will be held in the last half of June 2023. The outcome of the application processing will be published after these meetings.