Most projects must submit an initial report before the project can receive funding.
In the initial report, you must:
- confirm all the roles in the project
- make necessary changes to the project's progress plan and work packages
- apply for any necessary changes in the composition of partners if one or more project partners from the application suddenly are unable to participate
- clarify and incorporate any conditions given to you by us in the grant letter
- answer questions related to the implementation of the project about
- in projects with partners: redistribute grants between grant recipients if necessary
If one or more of the collaborating partners in the project are companies (receiving grants for economic activity), they must confirm the size of their company, submit a self-declaration and confirm that the organisation is not in any financial difficulties.
The deadline for submitting the initial report is 30 days after you have received the grant letter from us.
Roles in the project
The persons associated with the application, minus the applicant creator, have been automatically transferred to the project with the roles assigned to them in the application. If you want to add more people, you can do this in the initial report.
We recommend that you have at least one project administrator in the project. If it is necessary to change the project manager or organisation representative for a participating organisation, you can fix this under "Roles in the project". If you have a change in mandatory roles, new persons must confirm their participation in the project before the report can be submitted.
Read about Roles in applications and projects.
Changing the project period
If you realise that the project will not be able to start and progress as you planned in the application, you must update the start and end dates in the work packages. The changes must be within what was stated in the call for proposals regarding project length, earliest project start and end date.
Changing the participating organisations
If the project has collaborating partners or other partners and you need to change the composition of the partners before the project starts, you can apply for this in the initial report. You must justify why you need to change this and how any new organisation will contribute to the project. It is only possible to add organisations from sectors that are permitted, stated in the call text.
If you add or remove a collaborating partner, you must update the work packages with new cost objects and possibly new R&D providers (see link to work packages and budget). The total project budget will be updated automatically.
Any new collaborating partner must have an organisation representative who can confirm on My page that they will participate in the project before the report can be submitted. We assess whether the change of collaborating partners meets the requirements of the call before we approve the initial report.
Requirements for changes from the Research Council
In some funding decisions, we may require you to make changes to the project's plan and budget before you can receive the payment. This may be, for example, that costs have been entered incorrectly or that they need to be itemised. We may also see that a work package has been categorised incorrectly, and thus affects the level of support in the project.
If you have objections to our requirements for changes, you can comment on this in the initial report. We may adjust or even remove requirements for changes. If we do not do so, you have the right to lodge a complaint on the decision.
Data management plan
Projects that receive funding from us and that handle data must draw up a data management plan. The plan is a tool and a framework that contributes to good and secure data management throughout the research process. A data management plan makes the research data easier to find, the research more reproducible and it increases the potential for data reuse.
Read more about Sharing research data.
In the initial report, you must give an account of the status of the data management plan. If you believe that the project does not need a data management plan, you must justify this.
Research security
Research security is about anticipating and preventing important information or technologies from falling into the wrong hands, so that we avoid damage to national or economic security. Research security is also about ensuring that research is conducted in an ethical and honest manner, and that research is not used to undermine important societal values.
In the initial report, it is mandatory to answer questions related to research safety. The questions will help you determine whether there is a risk or need for measures related to research security in the project. The Project Owner (i.e. the organisation), the project manager and the project participants are all responsible for ensuring research safety in the project.
Read more about research security and responsible international knowledge collaboration here.
Risk of climate and environmental damage
In the initial report, we also ask you to consider whether the implementation of the project may lead to significant damage to the climate and the environment. The questions relate to the six categories in the EU's taxonomy for sustainable economic activity.
Read more about the Taxonomy for Sustainable Economic Activity (regjeringen.no, in Norwegian only).
All projects must answer these questions, even the projects who do not receive direct grants for economic activity.
We collect statistics on possible damage to important climate and environmental goals for all the projects we finance. Reporting possible damage will not have negative consequences for the project.
User participation
If projects are related to health research, you must describe any user involvement in the implementation of the activities. User participation means that people who are affected by the research project, such as patients, users, relatives or representatives from user organisations, are given the opportunity to influence the content of the project, how it is carried out and the dissemination of the results.
It is not enough to just inform about the project. The users must actively participate in the project and have a real influence. User participation is not equivalent with the collection of data from patients and relatives who have the role of study object or respondent. If the project is not related to health research, you do not need to answer the questions.
Collaboration agreements
In projects with the partners, the parties involved in the collaboration must confirm that a collaboration agreement has been entered into after you have received the decision on My page.
You must do this after the initial report has been submitted and assessed. When we approve the report, a message goes out to all participating organisations in the project to confirm that collaboration agreements have been signed. The deadline for confirming that collaboration agreements have been signed is within 60 days from the day you receive the notification.
Read more about collaboration agreements.
Redistribution of grants in projects with partners
In the call from which you have applied for funding, you can see how much funding can be awarded to partners from different sectors and company sizes, i.e. how much of the costs the Research Council can support.
However, it is the maximum amount of funding for a project in the call that determines the actual funding for the organisations participating in the application. If the budgeted costs are high enough, partners will not achieve the maximum aid intensity because the maximum aid amount has been reached. The parties must therefore contribute a higher deductible of the funding.
If this happens in the application, we will automatically distribute the amount of support between the parties based on their relative share of costs. In the budget, you will see how we have distributed support and deductibles for partners in each work package.
In the application, we do not allow you to change user fees by redistributing the calculated support, i.e. that one organisation can contribute with a higher user fee and thus lower the user fee for another. This is a limitation in the application that may create some uncertainty if the organisations have agreed to distribute the support among themselves in a different way than what is shown in the application.
However, you can make such a redistribution in the initial report, if the application is approved. In the budget table for work packages, it will be possible to move the grant between the organisations across work packages and thus change the self-financing. The conditions are that the support does not exceed the maximum aid intensity that the parties can receive in the work packages and that the total support for the project is not greater than what is the basis for the grant decision.
Self-declarations
In order to receive funding, all companies involved in the project must confirm the size of the company and that they are not companies in financial difficulties. The deadline for such confirmation is 14 days from the date the decision is made available on My page.