Collaborative Researcher Project on Mental Health in Ukraine During and After Wartime

The Norwegian partner will be responsible for submitting the application in the MyRCN webportal. Each project may only include one Norwegian and one Ukrainian partner. The project may not include the participation of R&D suppliers. 

Both the Norwegian and the Ukrainian partner must meet the requirements stated by their national funding agency. Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply (see the list of approved Norwegian research organisations). See more information below.  

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The research organisation listed as the project owner in the application form must be the Norwegian partner in the project. The project owner must submit the application on behalf of all partners. The project owner will bear the primary responsibility for the project, including its technical and administrative coordination and timely scientific and financial reporting. 

Requirements relating to the project administrator 

The project administrator registered in the application form must be an administrative representative at the project owner organisation, for example head of department, head of research, or someone else at the research organization with the formal authority to approve contracts. This individual will hold formal responsibility for the application and must have to right to formally sign the contract on behalf of the organisation.  

Requirements relating to the project manager  

The project manager must hold an approved doctoral degree or have attained associate professor qualifications prior to the application deadline. For the purposes of this call, employment as Researcher 1, Researcher 2, or Senior Researcher within the institute sector is regarded as equivalent to associate professor competence. The project manager must be employed by the project owner. 

You can only be the project manager for one application submitted to this call. 

Requirements for Ukrainian partners 

The Ukrainian partner must be a research institution or an institution of higher education of state ownership, registered in Ukraine as a legal entity in the United State Register of Legal Entities, Individual Entrepreneurs, and Public Organisations.

The Ukrainian principal investigator must have a research degree obtained or recognized in Ukraine and the Ukrainian partner must be their main place of employment. Other Ukrainian investigators must have a research degree obtained or recognised in Ukraine or be a postgraduate student. The Ukrainian partner must include at least three investigators (including the principal investigator) and a maximum of two support staff.  

The Ukrainian investigators and support staff can only be included in one proposal submitted to this call. 

Detailed eligibility requirements for the Ukrainian partners and researchers are given in the Annex. 

You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. A cost covered from external sources would not constitute an actual cost for the project and would not be eligible to be covered by the grant awarded by the RCN. The project owner must obtain information on costs from the partner in the project. No more than 60 percent of the total budget may be allocated to either partner. These costs must be entered in the cost plan under the cost category to which they belong. The cost plan must be in thousands of NOK.  

Ukrainian institutions may calculate payroll and other costs in UAH according to institutional rules and Ukrainian legislation but must convert to NOK for the joint application and reporting. Additional requirements for the budget for the Ukrainian partner are outlined in the Annex. 

We require that you structure the project budget into the following cost categories in your application:  

• Payroll and indirect expenses: Own salary in accordance with rates for funding research fellowships. Overhead costs incurred by research organisations abroad and in Norway are included in the rates. If the funding from the RCN does not cover all the costs of the position, the difference must be covered through own funding.    
• Equipment: This includes operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment and research infrastructure necessary to carry out the project.   
• Operating expenses: Costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out the project's R&D activities.  

The funding cannot be used to cover purchase of R&D services. 

The Norwegian partner must ensure that all costs are according to the RCN’s general budget requirements. The Ukrainian partner will have additional requirements specified below and in the Annex at the end of the call text. The grant is paid out to the Norwegian partner according to the grant agreement. Successful applicants will enter into a collaboration agreement covering at least the entire project implementation period. 

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

Scope of support 

Funding of NOK 2– 6 million per project is available under this call. We do not require own financing.  

Research ethics  

The RCN requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion for Research Quality - Quality in R&D Activities. In the template for the project description, there is a separate section that deals with research ethics. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the expert panel that there is a plan in place to deal with the most important ethical dilemmas in the project. If you need to describe this in more detail, this can be done elsewhere in the project description.  

The responsibility for ensuring that the research ethics standard is followed lies with the individual researcher and research institution (cf. the Act on the Organisation of Research Ethics Work). The panel's assessment and the RCN's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval. 

Conditions for funding 

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

• The RCN’s conditions for funding can also be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects on the information page What the contract involves. 
• Intellectual property rights are regulated by the general terms and conditions for R&D projects linked to above. 
• The Project Owner and any partners are required to make reference to the RCN’s support in any external information issued about the project. Reference to the RCN’s support in external information must also include reference to the NRFU. 
• 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. 
• The RCN requires full and immediate open access for scientific articles, see 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, where you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us. 
• The Ukrainian partner will in addition be submitting a separate scientific progress report to be reviewed by the NRFU Scientific Council. By receiving funding, both partners agree that the Ukrainian partner will submit this report.  

The proposal must be submitted by the Norwegian partner/applicant. Each applicant can only submit one proposal. The project owner shall submit all the application documents to RCN by the deadline for submissions. In addition, the Ukrainian partner shall submit all the application documents listed in the Annex to the NRFU within three working days after the deadline for submissions. 

The application must meet the following requirements:  

• Each proposal must have one main applicant based in Norway and one partner based in Ukraine. 
• All applications and attachments submitted to the call must be in English. In some cases (listed in the Annex), attachments must be submitted in Ukrainian with an unofficial English translation attached. 
• All attachments must be in PDF format.  
• All mandatory attachments must be included using the templates supplied below.  
• The budget must adhere to the requirement of allocation of funds between the Norwegian and Ukrainian partner. 
• Requirements relating to the project manager and the Project Owner must be met.  
• Projects must start between 1 January 2027 and 1 July 2027. The latest permitted project completion is 30 June 2030.  

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description.  
• CV for the project manager (i.e. the Norwegian principal investigator), the Ukrainian principal investigator and Ukrainian researchers (see Annex for details); maximum of four pages each). 
• For the Ukrainian partner, the NRFU requires six attachments as documentation. You can find the list of these mandatory attachments in the Annex. 

Use the standard templates for all attachments, including those specific to the Ukrainian partner. The templates are available at the bottom of this page. 

Optional attachments 

• Attach CVs for the any other important project participants (each a maximum of four pages). Upload each CV as a separate attachment and select the attachment category "Curriculum vitae (CV)". You will assess which project participants are the most important, and in which cases it will be of importance in the application processing to assess the project participants' qualifications.  

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless the RCN and/or the NRFU 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. 

The extent to which the proposed work is ambitious, novel, and goes beyond the state-of-the-art
• Scientific creativity and originality.
• Novelty and boldness of hypotheses or research questions.
• Potential for development of new knowledge beyond the current state-of-the-art, including significant theoretical, methodological, experimental or empirical advancement.

The quality of the proposed R&D activities
• Quality of the research questions, hypotheses and project objectives, and the extent to which they are clearly and adequately specified.
• Credibility and appropriateness of the theoretical approach, research design and use of scientific methods. Appropriate consideration of interdisciplinary approaches.
• The extent to which appropriate consideration has been given to ethical issues and gender dimension in research content, and the use of stakeholder/user knowledge if appropriate.

Potential impact of the proposed research
• Potential for academic impact:
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future scientific challenges.
The extent to which the planned outputs are openly accessible to ensure reusability of the research outputs and enhance reproducibility.
• Potential for societal impact (if addressed by the applicant):
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address UN Sustainable Development Goals or other important present and/or future societal challenges.
• The extent to which the potential impacts are clearly formulated and plausible.

Communication and exploitation
• The extent to which the appropriate open science practices are implemented as an integral part of the proposed project to ensure open sharing and wide distribution of research outputs.
• Quality and scope of communication and engagement activities with different target audiences, including relevant stakeholders/users.

The quality of the project manager and project group
• The extent to which the project manager has relevant expertise and experience, and demonstrated ability to perform high-quality research (as appropriate to the career stage).
• The degree of complementarity of the participants and the extent to which the project group has the necessary expertise needed to undertake the research effectively.

The quality of the project organisation and management
• Effectiveness of the project organisation, including the extent to which resources assigned to work packages are aligned with project objectives and deliverables.
• Appropriateness of the allocation of tasks, ensuring that all participants have a valid role and adequate resources in the project to fulfil that role.
• Appropriateness of the proposed management structures and governance.

• The extent to which the project satisfies the thematic orientation described in the call for proposals.
• The extent to which the project satisfies any other priorities in the call for proposals.

The RCN will check if the applications fulfil the formal requirements for the applications, including the total budget, the number of partners, the project’s length and whether all mandatory attachments have been submitted. The RCN will then assess the eligibility of the Norwegian partner and the NRFU will assess the eligibility of the Ukrainian partner. If the proposal fulfils the eligibility criteria, it will go to the next step of the application process. Otherwise, the proposal will be rejected. The RCN will inform the Project Owner of such rejection and justify its decision.  

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

The application may be rejected if the project manager has been convicted of misconduct by the Joint Integrity Committee or the Investigation Committee in the last two years prior to the submitted application. 

We will follow the RCN’s standard administrative procedures for application processing. Read more about the application processing, including the obligatory use of referee panels, here: How we process applications. The employees of the Directorate of the NRFU, members of the Scientific Council of the NRFU and members of the Supervisory Board of the NRFU cannot be members of the referee panel. Any individual participating or who is otherwise involved in a proposal submitted to this call cannot be selected for the referee panel carrying out review.  

The RCN may reject applications where the Project Owner or partner has materially breached their obligations in other projects funded by the RCN in the two years prior to the submission of the application. RCN may at any point during the administrative procedures reject an application if the requirements of the call text become unfulfilled, including where false information has been submitted.  

The referee panels award the applications five separate marks and written assessments: Potential for advancing the state-of-the-art, Quality of R&D activities, Impact, Implementation and Relevance. The RCN's administration creates ranking lists based on the given marks of each project.  

Finally, it is the portfolio boards that decide whether the applications will be awarded funding or not. The portfolio boards’ decisions are based on the ranking list and an overall assessment of the project portfolio. We will seek to ensure that the breadth of the call's thematic scope is covered. 

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