Research for the Norwegian Food Safety Authority
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Important dates
05 Oct 2022
Date call is made active
16 Nov 2022
Application submission deadline
31 Jan 2023
Expected announcement of funding decision
01 Feb 2023
Earliest permitted project start
01 Jul 2023
Latest permitted project start
30 Jun 2027
Latest permitted project completion
Important dates
Purpose
The purpose of this call is to gain more knowledge about user behaviour relating to animal health and welfare.
About the call for proposals
The Norwegian Food Safety Authority needs more knowledge about the extent to which animal owners ensure good animal health and welfare, and the reasons for any non-compliance with the regulations. This will serve as a basis for developing the most expedient use of funding and policy instruments, and for the public administration to promote animal owners’ self-motivation in the most effective way. It must be easier to do the right thing.
An important aspect of the project is to look at what drivers can serve to explain the behaviour of groups of animal owners who follow the regulations and those who do not. The research must target animal owners who are subject to the Norwegian Food Act and Animal Welfare Act, and relevant regulations related to the health and welfare of land animals.
Projects granted funding should provide new knowledge about:
- how the public administration can identify different groups of animal owners based on relevant drivers, making it possible to see which groups comply with the regulations and which do not
- how the public administration can influence animal owners who do not comply with the regulations
- how the public administration can support self-motivation to comply with the rules and make it easier to make the right choices
- comparisons of regulatory compliance in the field of animal and plant health where relevant
The Norwegian-language call for proposals is the legally binding version.
Who is eligible to apply?
Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.
Who can participate in the project?
Requirements relating to the Project Owner
The Project Owner must be a research organisation.
The research organisation defined as the Project Owner in the grant application form must have formally approved submission of the application.
Requirements relating to the project manager
You must have an approved doctorate or achieved professor/associate professor qualifications before the date of the application submission deadline. For the purposes of this call, you are also qualified if you hold or have held a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) in the institute sector.
The project manager must be employed by the Project Owner or one of the partners.
You can be the project manager of up to two applications (identical or different) for a Researcher Project with the deadline of 16 November 2022.
Requirements relating to partners
Only approved Norwegian research organisations (see a list of such organisations under "Who is eligible to apply?" above) and corresponding research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and to receive Researcher Project funding.
Other types of organisations, such as companies and other undertakings, may not be project partners in Researcher Projects.
Read more about partners.
As the Project Owner and/or a project partner, you may hire subcontractors to provide services and contribute to individual tasks in the project. Subcontractors cannot be granted any rights to project results. Organisations that are subject to the regulations governing public procurements must, in the normal manner, select subcontractors in accordance with these regulations. R&D providers may not be used in the project.
A project participant may not be assigned two different roles in the project. This means that a subcontractor for the project may not have the role of Project Owner or partner in the same project.
What can you seek funding for?
You can apply for funding to cover the actual costs necessary to carry out the project. The Project Owner must obtain information about costs from each project partner. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant category.
In the grant application form, you must break down the project budget into the following cost categories:
- Payroll and indirect expenses, which are costs incurred by the Project Owner's institution.
- Other project costs, which comprise costs for other activities that are necessary to carry out R&D activities under the project. Any purchases from subcontractors must be entered here. All costs entered as “Other operating expenses” must be specified in the application.
- Equipment, encompassing operating and depreciation costs for scientific equipment that is necessary to carry out the project.
Do not use the item “Procurement of R&D services”.
You will find detailed and important information about what to enter in the project budget on our website.
If the project includes doctoral and post-doctoral research fellowships and there are concrete plans in place for research stays abroad for the fellowship holders, the costs of such stays may be included in the grant application. The Research Council has also issued a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may apply for funding under that call in the course of the project period for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated to the project.
Scope of funding
We can provide NOK 8 million in funding per project under this call. There are no requirements for own funding, but some own financing of researcher time is required for applications from the university and university college sector.
Conditions for funding
Projects must commence between 1 January 2023 and 1 June 2023, and you must apply for funding from the Research Council for 2023. The latest permitted completion date for the project is 1 June 2027.
Funding allocated to the 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 non-economic activities.
The Research Council’s requirements relating to allocations and disbursement of funding for the first year and any pledges and payments for subsequent years are set out in the General Terms and Conditions for R&D Projects, available in their entirety on the information page What the contract involves.
If your project is granted funding, the following must be in place when you revise the application:
- 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 the project awarded funding. The requirement does not apply to the business 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 processing plan for any research data that will be processed in the project in connection with the revised application. Research data must be made available in accordance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable).
- The Project Owner organisation is responsible for selecting which archiving solution(s) to use for storing research data generated during the project. This must be specified in the data management plan for the project.
Reports and disbursement of funding
Funding will be disbursed in arrears, and only actual expenses entered in the institution’s accounts will be covered. All reporting takes place electronically.
Relevant thematic areas for this call
The call covers the thematic area “Land-based food, the environment and bioresources”, including from the perspectives of social sciences and the humanities. Grant applications will be accepted for both basic and applied research projects.
Land-based food, the environment and bioresources
Practical information
Requirements for this application type
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 of the grant application that will be processed.
- The application and all attachments must be submitted in English.
- All attachments must be uploaded in PDF format.
Mandatory attachments
- Project description (maximum 11 pages) using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
- The CV of the project manager using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
Applications that do not meet the requirements listed above will be rejected.
Optional attachments
- The CVs of key members of the project using the standard template available for download at the end of the call.
- Proposals for up to three referees who are considered qualified to assess the application.
All attachments must be submitted together with the application. We will not accept attachments submitted after the deadline for applications unless we have requested further information.
We will not assess documents and websites linked to in the application, or other attachments than those specified above. There is no technical validation of the content of the attachments you upload, so please make sure that you upload the correct file for the selected type of attachment.
Assessment criteria
We assess applications in light of the objectives of the application type in question and on the basis of the following criteria:
Excellence – potential for advancing 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.
Excellence – quality of 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, safety issues, gender dimension in research content, and use of stakeholder/user knowledge if appropriate.
Impact
• Potential for academic impact:
The extent to which the planned outputs of the project address important present and/or future scientific challenges.
• 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
• Quality and scope of communication and engagement activities with different target audiences, including relevant stakeholders/users.
Implementation
• 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.
Relevance to the call for proposals
We will prioritise projects with female project managers when the applications are otherwise considered to be on a par.
Administrative procedures
Applications will be assessed by an international referee panel. After the panel assessment, the applications will be assessed in relation to the criterion “Relevance to the call for proposals”. The administration then writes a recommendation to the board with granting authority, which will make the final decision on approval or rejection.
See also: How we process applications.
We expect to publish which applications have been awarded funding on 31 January 2023.