Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists (FRIPRO)
Download the call
Download templates
Last updates
The limits for the submission restriction have been adjusted downwards, with effect from 1 January 2025. The call text has been somewhat restructured, where some information has been moved from the call text to FRIPRO's information page.
We have adjusted the amount of funding presumed available.
We have specified the requirement relating to the project administrator.
Purpose
The purpose of FRIPRO is to fund curiosity-driven and bold research that can contribute to advancing the state-of-the-art. FRIPRO supports both basic and applied research in all research areas. This call is aimed at researchers at an early stage in their careers, who have demonstrated the potential to conduct research of high scientific quality.
About the call for proposals
New knowledge often arises in unexpected ways and in areas that are impossible to predict. Therefore, free, basic research is important for scientific and academic renewal, and can form the basis for more applied research, business development and policy-making. The FRIPRO scheme will contribute to this, and we are therefore announcing funding for basic and applied research projects in all research areas, where the project ideas come from the scientists themselves.
At FRIPRO, we are willing to invest in the bold research that has the potential to provide significant advances in the field, even if it also has a significant risk of failing. We do not have any requirements regarding the potential for societal impact in the projects we fund through FRIPRO. The peer reviewers will only assess the applications on this point if you have described such possible effects in the application.
The competition in FRIPRO is fierce. We therefore have a qualification threshold which means that an application must receive a mark of 6 or 7 on all the assessment criteria in the peer review (according to a grading scale of 1–7, where 7 is the highest grade) to be eligible for funding. We therefore recommend that you work on making the application as good as possible before you submit it.
Among the eligible applications, we place most emphasis on the criteria Excellence – potential for advancing the state-of-the-art and Excellence – quality of R&D activities when selecting applications for funding. Priority will be given to projects with project managers of the underrepresented gender when the applications are otherwise assessed equally. Read more about how we select applications for funding on FRIPROs information page.
Five calls for ground-breaking research
We want to reach researchers at different levels of their careers and different stages of their research. We therefore have five calls for proposals, with different project sizes and objectives, and different requirements for the project manager's experience:
- Researcher Project with International Mobility (International Mobility): 0-7 years after PhD, with research stay(s) abroad
- Radical Research Ideas for Early Career Scientists (Radical Research Ideas): 2–7 years after PhD, short project to find out if your most riveting research idea is viable
- Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists (Early Career Scientists, this call): 2–7 years after PhD, to gain experience in leading a research project
- Researcher Projects for Experienced Scientists (Experienced Scientists): 6+ years after PhD
- Top Researchers: 6+ years after PhD for the project manager and 2+ years after the PhD for at least one other project participant. A long-term project with the goal of making the research community world-leading in its field.
Do you meet the experience requirements for several of the calls and are unsure which one you should choose? Our general recommendation is to choose one of the calls that has the lowest experience requirements for the project manager. Here, we expect a better chance of reaching the top of the competition for funding. Please also read the objectives and framework for each call for proposals you can apply for, and then choose the one that best suits your project idea. For a comparison of the five calls, see FRIPROs information page.
When can you submit your application and when will you receive an answer?
This is an open-ended call for proposals, with ongoing application reception and processing. This means that you can apply at any time as long as you are not subject to a waiting period or submission restriction period. We process the applications as they are received. The project for which you are applying must have a planned project start 8-18 months after you submit the application. Read more under “Requirements relating to the project manager”, and under "Administrative procedures" about application processing and application processing time.
We have made a video where we go through the application form: FRIPRO ongoing application reception and processing (video in Norwegian).
The call is available in both Norwegian and English. The text of the Norwegian call for proposals is legally binding. In the event of changes, the call text that appears at the time you submit the application applies to your application.
Who is eligible to apply?
Only approved Norwegian research organisations may apply. See here for the list of approved Norwegian research organisations.
Who can participate in the project?
Project Owner
The research organisation listed as the Project Owner in the application form must have approved the submission of the grant application.
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 person will be formally responsible for the application, and will be our contact person in case there are project changes etc.
Important: The project manager and the project administrator cannot be the same person. Applications where the same name is registered for these two roles, must be withdrawn and submitted again with the correct information, or they will be rejected.
Project manager
- Experience: You must have an approved doctorate, and the period between the date of defence of your doctoral dissertation and the day you submit your application must be between two and seven years. If more than seven years have passed since you defended your dissertation, you may apply to subtract statutory leaves of absence, compulsory military or civilian service, seeking asylum or sick leave in accordance with our rules for subtracting time. Read more on FRIPRO's information page, under «Who can apply”.
- You must dedicate at least 25 per cent of a full-time position in the project for the duration of the project period.
- You must be employed in at least 50 per cent of a full-time position at the Project Owner (research organisation) for the entire duration of the project period. You can be employed in a position as a postdoctoral fellow, researcher or another academic position. You may, but do not have to, be employed by the Project Owner when you submit your grant application.
- Ongoing project: If you are already a project leader for a project funded by FRIPRO or by ground-breaking research through an open-ended call (Top Researchers and Research Ideas), you can only be the project manager for a new application for Top Researchers, Experienced Scientists, Early Career or International Mobility 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 Research Ideas or for other calls for proposals under the Research Council, even if you have an ongoing FRIPRO/ground-breaking research project.
- Waiting period/submission restriction period: You cannot be the project manager for an application for Early Career if you have a waiting period or submission restriction period in FRIPRO/ground-breaking research. As the project manager for an application for 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 application for one of the five calls. The waiting period also means that you can only be the project manager for one application for one of the five calls for proposals for ground-breaking research at a time. 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. Read more on FRIPRO's information page, under «Who can apply?”.
Project participants, partners and subcontractors
Project participants are individuals/researchers. Project partners and subcontractors are organisations. All persons who will be involved in the project must be employed by either the Project Owner, a project partner or a subcontractor while participating in the project. Subcontractors and persons associated with subcontractors must not be mentioned by name in the application, but the work to be done by subcontractors can be described. You must enter all the researchers you have mentioned in the application under "project participants" in the application form. If the application is approved, you must have cooperation agreements with all project partners.
Read more about project partners and subcontractors on FRIPRO's information page.
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.
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 on costs from the partners in the project. These costs are to be entered in the cost plan under the relevant cost category.
You can receive support 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.
- For applications submitted in 2025, our support for personnel and indirect costs in the higher education sector is limited to our rates for funding of research fellowships. If the rates do not cover all costs for recruitment positions in the university and university college or institute sector or for research positions in the university and university college sector, we assume that you cover the difference with your own funding. For research positions in the institute sector, you must use the hourly rates that the department has reported to us.
- For applications submitted on 1 January 2026 or later, new guidelines for payroll and indirect costs apply (only in Norwegian). The Research Council will then stop using lump-sum rates.
- 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. Procurements 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 the budget should contain.
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 also has a separate call for Funding for Research Stays Abroad for Doctoral and Post-doctoral Fellows. The project manager may seek funding under that call during the project period for research stays abroad for research fellows affiliated to the project, as well as for the project manager.
Scope of funding
The Research Council can provide NOK 4–10 million in funding per project under this call. We do not require own financing.
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, in Norwegian). The panel's assessment and the Research Council's decision on funding do not entail any research ethics approval.
Conditions for funding
The Research Council will not award funding that constitutes state aid under this call. This means that the funding should only go to your non-economic activity. We require a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Our requirements for allocation and disbursement of support for the first year, and any pledges 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.
If you are awarded funding for the project, you must update the application with extended budgets. There are also requirements for research security, action plans for gender equality, open access for scientific articles, data management plans, storage of research data and registration of studies involving humans. You can find more information about what you must do if your application is approved on FRIPRO's information page.
Relevant thematic areas for this call
This call encompasses all disciplines and research areas, and we are accepting applications for funding for both basic and applied research.
Ground-breaking research
Practical information
Requirements for this funding scheme
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, project administrator 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
Use designated templates for all mandatory attachments. The templates can be found at the end of the call.
- project description, maximum 11 pages
- CV for the project manager, maximum 4 pages
- Documentation for subtracting time if you apply for a deduction for experience. We don't have a template for this. The document must be uploaded under Attachments/Other items in the application form.
Optional attachments
- CV for the most important project participants
- Each CV can be a maximum of four 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 of relevant candidates for PhD and postdoctoral positions must not be attached, and it is not permitted to mention these in the application.
- 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. Use the template at the bottom of the call.
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.
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 and gender dimension in research content, and the 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.
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.
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.
Administrative procedures
The Research Council's competence requirement is that at least two of the referees assessing the application must have generalist or specialist expertise in the application. Write your application so that it can be understood by peers with general expertise in the research field.
The FRIPRO scheme's annual budget of up to NOK 1,3 billion is tentatively divided between three of the open-ended calls for proposals: (Three-Year) Researcher Project with International Mobility (FRIPRO), Researcher Projects for Early Career Scientists (FRIPRO) and Researcher Projects for Experienced Scientists (FRIPRO). The actual distribution may be different. The funding is allocated evenly throughout each year. The overall budget may change as a result of changes in the Research Council's budgets.
The average application processing time is about 5 months, with variations of 2-10 months. We announce which applications have been granted approximately every two months. Applicants will also receive a reply letter on My RCN Web.
See "How are applications processed, and when will I receive a result?" on the FRIPRO information page for a more thorough description of the application processing in FRIPRO.
Create application
Applications for Researcher Project for Early Career Scientists (FRIPRO) should be created on My RCN Web. Application templates should be filled and uploaded in the application.
Create application