Top Researchers – Researcher Projects to Develop World Leading Research Communities

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

Requirements relating to the Project Owner  

The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the application.  

Requirements relating to the project manager  

• Experience: You must have an approved doctoral degree or obtained associate professor qualifications. From the date of the public defence or the date you obtained the associate professor qualification and until the day you submit the application, at least six years must have passed. For the purposes of this call, being or having been employed as researcher 1, researcher 2 or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence.   
• Waiting/submission restriction period: You cannot be the project manager for an application for Top Researchers if you have a waiting period or submission restriction period in FRIPRO/ground-breaking research. See detailed description below.  
• Ongoing FRIPRO/groundbreaking research project:  If you are already the project manager for a project with funding from FRIPRO/groundbreaking research (Top Researchers, FRIPRO Toppforsk, Researcher Project for Experienced Scientists, Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists, Researcher Projects for Young Talents , Radical Research Ideas for Early Career Scientists or Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility), you can only be the project manager for a new application for funding from Top Researchers, Researcher Project for Experienced Researchers (FRIPRO), Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists (FRIPRO) or Three-year Researcher Project with International Mobility (FRIPRO) if the new project has a start date after the end date in the first approved contract for the ongoing project. If you are unsure of which date applies to you, contact the case officer for the ongoing project. You can be the project manager for an application for funding from Radical Research Ideas for Early Career Scientist or other calls from the Research Council even if you have an ongoing FRIPRO-project.
• Ongoing CoE: A current, former, or planned center leader of an ongoing Center of Excellence (CoE) can only be the project manager for a top researcher application with a planned start date after the end date of the ongoing CoE (including any delays). Therefore, there can be no overlap in the CoE and top researcher project periods.
• ERC application: project managers for granted Top Researchers applications must apply for funding from ERC before they can be the project manager for a new application to Top Researchers or Researcher Project for Experienced Scientists (FRIPRO). 

Waiting period and submission restriction period  

As a project manager for an application to one of the five calls for ground-breaking research, you will have a one-year waiting period calculated from the date you submitted the application until you can be the project manager for a new such application. If the application receives marks below the set limits from the panel assessing it, you will also be subject to a submission restriction period of 1-2 years. The length of the submission restriction period depends on the call from which you applied for funding. 

You cannot be the project manager for a new application to one of these five calls if you have a waiting period or submission restriction period, but you can be a project participant in others' applications and a project manager for applications for other calls from the Research Council, regardless of the waiting period and submission restriction period. The waiting period and submission restriction period apply across all open-ended calls for Researcher Projects within ground-breaking research, unless otherwise described in the call.  

The waiting period also means that you can only be the project manager for one application at a time. You must therefore choose which of the five calls you want to apply for. Check the requirements for the project manager and purpose for each call to see which one is right for you and your project.  

Requirements relating to the project participants 

There must be at least one named project participant in the project in addition to the project manager. This project participant must have a PhD or be approved with associate professor competence and at least two years must have passed from the date of their PhD defence or the day they received the associate professor competence and the date of submitting the application to this call. For the purposes of this call, being or having been employed as researcher 1, researcher 2 or senior researcher in the institute sector is considered to be associate professor competence. The project participant must be employed at an approved Norwegian research institution during the entire duration of the project.  

The project’s principal investigators must be defined in the project description, and must as a minimum include the project manager and the named project participant described above. 

Requirements relating to partners  

Only approved research organisations (see "Who is eligible to apply?" above) or equivalent research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and receive funding under this call. Other types of organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects. Read more about partners.  

The Project Owner and/or partners can engage subcontractors to provide services and contribute to the implementation of certain tasks in the project. Subcontractors may not be granted rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations for public procurement must in the normal manner carry out the selection of subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. It is not possible to have R&D suppliers in the project.    

A project partner may not have two different roles in the project. This means that a subcontractor may not serve as Project Owner or partner in the project at the same time.  

You can apply for funding to cover actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information about costs from the project partners. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant cost category.  

Support may be granted to cover the following costs:  

• Payroll and indirect expenses. Costs related to researcher time (including research fellowships and the position of the project manager) at the research organisations participating in the project.  For doctoral research fellowships, support is limited to a maximum of three years full-time equivalents. For postdoctoral fellowships, duration of the support is limited to a minimum of three years and a maximum of four years. See our website about post-doctoral research fellowship positions and doctoral research fellowship positions. 
• 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. Purchase from subcontractors over NOK 100 000 must be specified.   

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

If doctoral and postdoctoral research fellows are included in the project and you already have specific plans for them to stay abroad, you can apply for funding for the research stay(s) in the application now. The Research Council also has a separate call for proposals for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows (coming soon). Here you can apply for funding for stays abroad for research fellows who are part of the project after the research fellow(s) have been employed.  

Scope of funding  

We can award funding of NOK 15-40 million per project under this call. We do not require own financing. However, if our lump sum rates do not cover all costs for recruitment positions in the university and university college sector or the institute sector or for research positions in the university and university college sector, the difference must be covered through own financing. For research positions in the institute sector, the institute's reported hourly rates must be used. 

Ethics  

The Research Council requires a high standard of research ethics in the projects we fund, and ethics is included in the assessment criterion for Research Quality. In the template for the project description, there is a separate section that deals with this. The description of ethics is first and foremost an assurance to the peers 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, for example under method selection, or you can do so in the data management plan(s) (see below).  

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 Research Council's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval.  

Conditions for funding  

We do not award state aid under this call. This means that the funding can only go to the research organisation’s non-economic activity. We assume that the necessary accounting separation is in place. Our conditions for awarding and disbursing support for the first year, and any commitments and payments for subsequent years, can be found in our general terms and conditions for R&D projects 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 manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and managed any issue of research security in the project. Research security refers to the risks related to undesirable transfer of knowledge and technology, malign influence on research and innovation or violations of research ethics or 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) 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.   
• 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, where 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.

The application must be created and submitted via My RCN Web. This call for proposals is open-ended, which means that you can create and submit an application at any time. You can edit and save a created application until you submit it. It is the application that is submitted that is processed. You cannot change the application after you have submitted it. 

If you wish to make any changes to an application after you’ve submitted it, you must withdraw it. You can do so by sending us an e-mail to fripro@rcn.no with a copy to the administrative officer of the application stating the ES number of the application. Applications withdrawn within one month of submission do not result in a waiting period. You may then create a new application as a copy of the old one, make any necessary changes, and submit it again.  

The application must meet the following requirements:  

• The application and all attachments must be written in English.  
• Mandatory attachments must be included.  
• The attachments must be in PDF format.  
• Requirements relating to the project manager, the Project Owner, the research organisation, the project participants and partners must be met.  
• The project must have a planned start date between 8 and 18 months after submission of the application.   

If the application does not meet the requirements in the list above, we will ask you to withdraw the application and possibly resubmit it where the deficiencies have been corrected. If the application is not withdrawn, it may be rejected. Project managers of rejected applications receive a one year waiting period. 

Mandatory attachments  

The mandatory attachments must be written in templates that can be found at the end of the call.  

• project description, maximum 13 pages  
• CV of the project manager, maximum 4 pages  
• CV for at least one project participant in addition to the project manager, maximum four pages. Date of PhD defense or the day they received the associate professor competence must be given in the CV. 

Optional attachments  

• Attach CVs for the most important project participants,  
  • each CV must be a maximum of 4 pages.  
  • It is mandatory to use the CV template at the bottom of the call.  
  • 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.  
  • CVs for potential PhD and Postdoc positions shall not be included 
• If you wish, you can attach a brief description of competence or suggestions for up to three peers you believe would be suitable to assess your application. Reviewers must have their workplace outside of Norway and must have considerable experience within research. We are not obliged to use the suggestions, but can do so if necessary.  

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application.   

Attachments other than those mentioned here as mandatory and optional, as well as any websites that you link to in the application, will not be included in the assessment of the application.  

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.  

Please note that the evaluation criteria for this call differ somewhat from the evaluation criteria for other calls for Research Projects. The criteria for impact and implementation have been expanded for Top Researchers with one evaluation point each compared to the standard criteria in the other calls for Researcher Projects in groundbreaking research. Under impact, the panel will assess the project's ability to build a world-leading research environment, and under implementation, they will assess whether the collaboration between the project leader and the named project participant(s) is necessary to achieve the project's goals. 

Each application is assessed by a panel of peer reviewers before the Portfolio Board for Ground-breaking Research makes a decision on whether to award funding to an application or not. The portfolio board does this approximately every two months for all applications that have been peer-reviewed.    

Applications that are not eligible for funding will be rejected. Applications that qualify for funding are included in the competition for funding in three decision rounds. This also applies across calendar years. If your application qualifies, but is not granted in the first decision round, it will be given a second chance in the next decision round. If it is not granted then either, it will be included in a third and final round. Applications that are included in their second or third round will compete on an equal footing with applications that compete in their first round.

The application processing time for each application will vary, depending on factors such as the number of applications received within the same subject area, the availability of peer reviewers and coincidences. The average application processing time is estimated to be 5 months for applications that receive a response in the first round of decisions in which they are processed, with variations of 2-10 months. If your application is included in several rounds, it will take 2-4 months longer before you receive an answer to your application compared to an application that is either rejected or that is awarded funding in its first round of decision. 

We will announce which applications that are awarded funding about every two months. Applicants will also receive a letter on My RCN Web.  

See "FRIPRO's application processing" on the FRIPRO information page for a more thorough description of the application processing in FRIPRO.