Centre for Research on the Effects of Aid

Only approved Norwegian research organisations are eligible to apply. See the list of approved research organisations.

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

• The Project Owner must be an approved Norwegian research organisation. 
• The Project Owner must have approved the submission of the application form in the application form. 
• If the application is a collaboration between several organisations, the Project Owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. 

Requirements relating to the project manager 

The project manager's professional competence and suitability to carry out the project will be assessed by peers. There are no formal requirements for the project manager's qualifications. 

The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or by one of the partners. 

Requirements relating to collaborating partners 

Approved Norwegian research organisations and similar international research organisations may participate as collaborating partners in the project and receive funding. 

Relevant actors outside the research sector in Norway (industry, administration and civil society) may be included as collaborating partners of the centre. International actors outside the research sector, may also be included as partners. Actors from the industrial sector/enterprises registered outside of Norway cannot be included as collaborating partners in the centre. 

The centre must have at least one collaborating partner from low- or middle-income countries (LMICs). LMIC refers to countries that are included on the OECD list of ODA-approved countries.  

The collaboration must be based on principles for equitable partnerships, and the application must specify how the following points will be addressed in the centre:  

• A fair distribution of funds and institutional costs with partner institutions in LMICs. This means that the distribution of funds to and costs among collaborating partners in LMICs must be proportionate to their expected roles, involvement and responsibilities in the project. 
• Involvement of leading researchers  from the LMIC institutions on the scientific content of relevant work packages, development of the application and other scientific work in the centre. 
• Strengthening individual competence and institutional capacity of partner institutions in LMICs. Individual competence involves the inclusion of students, research fellows or young researchers in the project. 
• Equitable sharing of credits, e.g. scientific analyses, authorship, intellectual property rights and dissemination. 

Find more information about the requirements for equitable partnerships in the Guidelines and tools for responsible international knowledge cooperation, under the chapter entitled How to achieve equality in a partnership? 

The application must be strategically supported by the Project Owner and all collaborating partners. 

All collaborating partners must actively contribute to the planning and implementation of the centre's activities, dissemination of results from the centre's research activities and ensure that new knowledge is put to use.

You can apply for support to cover actual costs that are necessary to carry out the activity in the centre. The Project Owner must obtain information on costs from the partners in the project. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost type to which they belong.  We require that you break down the project budget into the following cost types in your application: 

• Payroll and indirect expenses (including research fellowships), which are costs incurred by the Project Owner and partners in the public sector, research organisations and Norwegian business and industry. For doctoral fellowships, support is limited to three full-time equivalents, and for postdoctoral fellowships, funding may be awarded for three to four years.     
• Other operating expenses, which are necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities. All costs entered as "other operating expenses" must be specified in the application. Purchases from subcontractors over NOK 100,000 must also be specified.  
• Equipment, which includes operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment necessary to carry out the project  

The cost type Procurement of R&D services is not to be used. 

You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on the website and more detailed information about the type of application in Requirements and guidelines for research centres (strategic environmental support, in Norwegian).  

In cases where the applicant requests de minimis support, this must be described and detailed in the cost plan. See more under Scope of support. We do not provide funding for major equipment investments or infrastructure under this call.     

Stays abroad for doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows must be covered within the framework of the centre. Here you can read more about research stays abroad.  

Scope of support 

Funding is available for the establishment of one research centre under this call. 

We do not require own financing. 

The centre will be assessed during the project period. The time of completion depends on the centre's period of operation and will be stated in the contract. Based on the evaluation of the centre,  the Research Council may stipulate new conditions in the contract for the centre's activities during the remaining years of the project period. The formative assessment will assess the centre's activity in relation to the goals it had set itself and success criteria under the heading Desired effect of the centre. The centre's plans for activities in the final period will also be assessed. The centre will present a plan for what will happen in terms of activities after the Research Council's funding has ended. 

Enterprises will receive the aid as de minimis aid. This means that the enterprise can receive a maximum of EUR 300,000 from the public sector over a three-year period. Prior to any payment of de minimis aid, we will request a written confirmation and an overview of all other de minimis aid that the enterprise has received during the last three financial years. The use of the de minimis funding must be reported to the Research Council on an annual basis. For enterprises that are part of a group, the maximum limit generally applies to the group as such. See also the EU de minimis aid regulation (Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2831). Read more about de minimis aid.  

Costs of foreign partners 

The Research Council's allocation may cover the costs incurred by international partners. See Budgeting of costs for international partners. Visiting researcher stays in Norway for international researchers must be covered within the framework of the centre. Here you can read more about research visits to Norway.  

Prerequisites for the award of funding 

Projects must start between 1 May 2027 and 1 December 2027. The latest permitted project completion date is 30.11.2035. 

Support for a research organisation goes to the organisation's non-economic activity. It therefore does not constitute state aid. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. 

The Research Council's conditions for the allocation and disbursement of funding for the first year, and any commitments and disbursements for subsequent years, are set out in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects, which you can find in full on the information page What the contract involves.  

In addition, you must be aware of the following if you should receive an award from us: 

• The Project Owner must establish a joint collaboration agreement with all partners and a mandate for the board. 
• The centre must appoint a board during the first year. It must consist of representatives of the Project Owner and the most important partners. 
• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and handled the consideration of research security in the project. Research security refers to risks associated with unwanted transfer of knowledge and technology, impact on research and innovation, or breaches of research ethics/integrity where knowledge and technology are used to undermine key societal values.  
• Grant recipients in research organisations and the public sector (Project Owners and partners) must have action plans for gender equality (GEPs) available on their websites. This must be in place before the contract is signed for projects with grants from us. The requirement does not apply to the private sector, interest groups or the voluntary sector, nor international collaborating partners.  
• The Research Council requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see Plan S - open access to publications.  
• For all projects that handle data, the Project Owner must prepare a data management plan in connection with the revised application. Here you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results. 

You can change and submit the application several times until the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the mandatory attachments. When the application deadline expires, it is the version of the application that was submitted most recently that we process. 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English 
• All attachments must be in PDF format. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description of maximum 20 pages. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• CV for project manager. Use the standard template that you can download at the bottom of the page. 
• Description of relevance of a maximum of one page. Use the default template that you can download at the bottom of the page. When describing the relevance of the application, read the call text carefully and the section Desired effect of the centre. The relevance description must be uploaded as attachment type "Other". 

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

Optional attachments 

• CV for key participants in the project, maximum 10. Use the standard template that you download at the bottom of the page. 
• A brief description of competence or proposals for up to three referees you believe will be suitable to assess your application. We are not obliged to use the suggestions but can use them if necessary. All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation. 

We will not consider documents and websites linked to in the application, or attachments other than those specified above. Be careful to upload the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions on what kind of templates it is possible to upload in the application form.

Applications will be assessed in light of the purpose of the call and the following criteria:

We will assess your application as it has been submitted. 

Once the applications have been received, the Research Council will first check that all formal requirements have been met. Applications that do not satisfy the formal requirements will be rejected. 

Where the requirements are met, we will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available in an online portal for experts who individually assess the criteria "research quality", "impact and effect" and "implementation". The referees will then meet in one or more thematic panels where they will reach a consensus assessment of the application for each of the three criteria. 

If the referee panel assesses all criteria for a mark of 5 or higher, the application is eligible for award. The application will then be assessed on the basis of the criterion "Relevance to the call" by the Research Council's case officers. The relevance assessment includes the points under Desired effect of the centre. The administration then writes a recommendation with recommendations to the portfolio board for Democracy and Global Development. The portfolio board bases its decision on the expert panel's assessment and the administration's assessment of the relevance of its decision.  

In the instance where one or more applications are ranked equally based on the referee panel's assessment and the administration's assessment of relevance, the portfolio board will use the following portfolio criteria as a basis for prioritisation between the applications:  

• A good plan for using the research in relevant user environments.  
• A good plan and strategy for how the centre and the knowledge it generates will be sustainable, i.e. have effects beyond the allocated project period. 

The Research Council may reject applications where the Project Owner or partner has materially breached its obligations in other projects funded by the Research Council in the two years prior to the submission of the application. 

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been found guilty of misconduct by the Joint Commission on Research Integrity or the National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct in the last two years prior to the submission of the application. 

See also: How we process applications. 

We expect to publish which applications will be awarded in December 2026.