Norwegian Centres of Excellence – SFF VI – Phase 1

Only approved Norwegian research organisations may serve as the Project Owner. See the list of approved research organisations.  

In the context of SFF, the Project Owner is also referred to as the "host institution".

Requirements relating to the Project Owner 

The host institution is to be listed as the Project Owner in the grant application form. 

The top administrator of the host institution (e.g. rector of a university or university college, top director of other research organisations) must approve the submission of the application to the Research Council. No later than the application deadline, the host institution must submit a list of grant applications approved for submission to the Research Council. Applications not specified on the list will be rejected. Please send the list to: sff@forskningsradet.no.  

Host institutions submitting more than four grant applications are expected to have a female centre director in at least 40 per cent of the proposed centres. A centre is considered to have a woman director if a woman is designated as centre director from the planned start-up, or if there are plans to switch to a specified woman director for at least half the centre’s period of operation. To facilitate follow-up of this stipulation, host institutions planning to submit more than four grant applications must additionally submit a list of the planned applications and centre directors well in advance of the application submission deadline, and by 1 October 2025 at the latest.

Requirements relating to the project manager 

• The project manager in the application is the same as the centre director. 
• To qualify as project manager, you must have an approved doctoral degree or have obtained qualifications at the associate professorship level before the application deadline. In the context of this call, current or previous employment in the Norwegian research institute sector in a position as forsker 1 (research professor), forsker 2 (senior researcher) or seniorforsker (senior researcher) is considered equivalent to professor or associate professorship competence. 
• You must be employed by the Project Owner/host institution (Norwegian research organisation) at the date of project start. 
• You can only be the centre director for one application. 
• If you are, or have been, a centre director for a SFF that is still receiving funding from the Research Council in 2028 (SFF-V), you cannot be the centre director in the application for this call. 
• You can participate in several applications to SFF-VI, but not as a centre director. 
• A centre can only have one centre director at a time. A centre may nevertheless have two centre directors who take turns in filling the role. This can be done by changing directors once during the centre’s period of operation, or by alternating back and forth multiple times. 
• If the centre director is not employed by the host institution at the time of the application deadline, a signed confirmation from the centre director must be submitted (see the template "SFF-VI - Confirmation centre director" at the end of the call) stating that he/she will work in a position of at least 80 per cent for the host institution and the centre and will be present at the host institution for the majority of the time each year. 

Requirements relating to collaborating partners 

An SFF centre is not required to have partners. 

Only approved Norwegian research organisations and corresponding research organisations in other countries are eligible to be partners and receive funding. 

The centre is intended to further develop a leading research environment in Norway, so financial support to foreign research organisations should therefore be limited. If the proposed centre plans to incorporate financial support to one or more international partners, the project description must justify how this funding will benefit the Norwegian research environment. 

If the proposed centre is awarded funding, we require that a signed collaboration agreement between the host institution and each partner at the institutional level must be in place before the contract between the Research Council and the host institution can be signed. 

As a general rule, a centre must consist of co-located research groups at the host institution. Any group leader/principal investigator employed by a partner must be physically present at the host institution on a regular basis. 

Other types of organisations, including companies and other undertakings, cannot be partners in an SFF and receive funding, but they may act as subcontractors providing services to the centre, as long as these do not involve R&D activities. See further description about the use of subcontractors.

For companies defined as “undertakings” in the state aid rules, it is particularly important to note that the Research Council does not award state aid under the SFF scheme. 

Requirements relating to group leaders/principal investigators 

You must submit CVs for a minimum of two and a maximum of six group leaders/principal investigators. If the centre has two centre directors, you can submit a maximum of five CVs for group leaders/principal investigators, a total maximum of seven CVs. 

The following requirements apply to the group leader/principal investigator for whom CVs are submitted: 

• Group leaders/principal investigators must be employed by the Project Owner/the host institution or by a collaborating partner. 
• If a group leader/principal investigator is not employed in Norway at the time of application, a signed confirmation from the group leader/principal investigator must be submitted (see the template "SFF-VI - Confirmation group leader-PI" at the end of the call text) stating that he/she will be employed in at least  20 per cent of a full-time position at the centre during the centre period and will be present at the host institution for a minimum of four weeks in total each year. 

A group leader/principal investigator may participate in multiple grant applications. 

The Research Council's funding scale for each centre ranges from NOK 80 to160 million over 10 years. 

As a general rule, an SFF will have several different funding sources: the SFF funding from the Research Council, own financing from the host institution, own financing from any collaborating partners, competition-based research commissions, and other private/international funding. Altogether, this constitutes the total financing. (“totalfinansieringen”). 

The Research Council distinguishes between the centre's 

• basic funding – which is to be entered in the grant application form 
• supplementary funding – to be entered in a mandatory attachment to the grant application form (see the template SFF-VI - 10-year budget) 

Basic funding 

Basic funding typically consists of the SFF grant funding from the Research Council, own financing from the host institution and any collaborating partners and other funding that has already been secured, such as foundations and private and public organisations.   

The Research Council does not require a contribution of own financing. However, an SFF centre has scientific objectives and a level of complexity that will in most cases require a substantially higher level of funding than the Research Council's grant. We therefore recommend that the research organisation/host institution responsible for the SFF centre and/or the centre’s research collaboration partners contribute to the basic funding amount.

The basic funding must finance activities that support the centre's objectives. This may include payroll and indirect costs (including costs related to visiting researchers), costs for the use of research infrastructure, travel and meeting expenses, and other operating expenses. 

Please see the webpage on What to enter in the project budget for details and important information. 

Please note that there is no room in the application form for all ten years in the budget tables. Therefore, only up to the first 96 months (8 years), 2028–2035, are to be entered. 

The basic funding amounts for the entire 10-year period must be included in the attachment "SFF-VI - 10-year budget" together with the amounts of supplementary funding. A maximum of 60 per cent of the Research Council’s SFF contribution for the 10-year period can be planned for in the period prior to the underway assessment, i.e. the first 72 months. 

Please note that project participants and guest researchers funded through the centre’s basic funding are not eligible to apply for the Research Council’s call Overseas Research Grants for PhD and Postdoctoral Fellows under the SFF-VI scheme. Overseas stays for these individuals may instead be covered within the centre’s basic funding. 

Supplementary funding 

Supplementary funding consists of all other anticipated income, including income from new competition-based research projects that support the centre's research objectives. 

The Research Council expects the host institution and any collaborating partners to obtain and include new competition-based research projects (e.g. EU projects or projects funded by the RCN’s other calls) that support the centre's research objectives. Existing projects with funding for the centre’s period of operation may also be included in the supplementary funding. The optimal amount of supplementary funding will vary from centre to centre, and the applicants should provide a realistic financial target for this funding in the attachment to the grant application form. The extent to which the centre achieves the stated target for supplementary funding will be monitored through annual progress reports, an underway assessment and the centre's final report. 

Conditions for funding 

Provided that the contract and requirements and guidelines are duly complied with, each centre is planned to be funded for 10 years.

Based on the underway assessment, the Research Council may, in a revised contract, set new conditions for the centre's activities for the remaining project period so that the centre's activities and original objectives are fulfilled in the best possible way. 

The Research Council will not award support that constitutes state aid under this call. This implies that the Research Council's funding must only cover the non-economic activity of the research organisations, as defined by the EFTA Surveillance Authority (ESA)’s guidelines on state aid for research, development, and innovation. The Research Council requires a clear separation of accounts for the organisation’s economic and non-economic activities. Read more about state aid.   

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.

The centres that are ultimately proposed for funding in Phase 2 will be invited to a contract meeting with the Research Council.   

In connection with their planning activities, applicants should acquaint themselves with the Research Council contract, where "Requirements and guidelines for SFF" is a specific attachment. See a preliminary version for SF-VI in Norwegian here.  

The centres that are ultimately proposed for funding in Phase 2 will be invited to a contract meeting with the Research Council. 

If you proceed to Phase 2 and are awarded funding for your project, the following must also be in place before you enter into a contract with The Research Council: 

• The project manager and the Project Owner must have assessed and managed the consideration 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 that are research organisations and public sector entities (Project Owners and partners) must 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. Here you will find more information about the requirements for data management plans in projects that receive funding from us.  
• The Project Owner decides which archiving solution(s) will be used for storing research data that emerges from the project. 
• For medical and health studies involving humans, the Research Council sets special requirements and guidelines for prospective registration of studies and publication of results.  

If a centre is awarded funding, the contract must be signed by the centre's host institution and by the Research Council. A breach of contractual terms during the centre's lifetime will have consequences for the funding. 

The application can be created from six weeks before the application deadline and must be submitted via My RCN Web. You can change and submit the application several times before the application deadline. We recommend that you submit your application as soon as you have completed the application form and uploaded the required attachments. After the application deadline has passed, the most recently submitted version of the application will be the one assessed in the review process. 

Applications that do not meet the requirements outlined in the call will be rejected: 

• The application and all attachments must be written in English. 
• All mandatory attachments must be included.

Attachments 

It is mandatory to use the templates, which you can find and download at the bottom of the call. Links contained in the submitted attachments will not be included in the application review process. 

Mandatory attachments 

• Project description, 1 front page + maximum 5 pages project description (optionally including some references) + 1 page reserved for references only. This is to be uploaded as a single attachment of a maximum of seven pages.  
• CV and track record for project manager(s)/centre director(s):  
  CV (maximum 2 pages) + 10-year track record (maximum 2 pages). This is to be uploaded as a single attachment of a maximum of four pages 
• CV and track record for group leader/principal investigator:  
  CV (maximum 2 pages) + 10-year track record (maximum 2 pages) or CV (maximum 2 pages) + early achievements track record (maximum 2 pages) for minimum 2 and maximum 6 group leaders/principal investigators. If there are two centre directors, CVs can be uploaded for a maximum of 5 group leaders/principal investigators. This is to be uploaded as a single attachment of a maximum of four pages for each group leader/principal investigator.  
• A funding plan specifying the centre's total funding, both basic funding and supplementary funding for 10 years (see the template "SFF-VI - 10-year budget" in Excel). Upload the attachment under "Attachments/Other items" in the application form.  
• If the centre director is not employed by the host institution at the time of the application deadline, a signed confirmation from the centre director must be submitted. The template "Confirmation centre director" must be used. Upload the attachment under "Attachments/Other items" in the application form.
• If a group leader/principal investigator (for whom a CV is submitted) is not employed in Norway at the time of the application deadline, a signed confirmation from the group leader must be submitted. The template "SFF-VI - Confirmation group leader-PI" should be used. Upload the attachment under "Attachments/Other items" in the application form.  
• If the application has a non-Norwegian collaborating partner, a signed letter of intent from the rector/top director of the research organisation must be submitted, stating that the foreign research institution intends to sign a collaboration agreement with the host institution in the case that the centre is funded. Upload attachments under "Attachments/Confirmation from partners" in the application form. No attachments should be uploaded under "Partner information".  

Optional attachments 

A proposal for up to three impartial international referees/peer reviewers (name, title, and affiliation) who can be used to review the grant application if the proposed centre is invited to advance to Phase 2. For interdisciplinary grant applications, applicants are encouraged to suggest interdisciplinary referees or referees in all disciplines relevant to the grant application. The Research Council will make use of the suggested referees if necessary. 

Note to attachments  

Please pay attention as to uploading the correct attachment type, as there are no technical restrictions as to what kind of attachments it is possible to upload in the application form. Attachments that do not comply with the templates and page number limits for this call will not be included in the assessment procedure of the application. Information/text beyond what has been requested in the attachment will not be evaluated. 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.  

All attachments to the application must be submitted with the application. We do not accept attachments submitted after the application deadline unless we have requested additional documentation.  

The assessment criteria have been translated from English into Norwegian. It is the English language version that will be used in the application review process, and applicants should therefore respond only to the English assessment criteria.

Once the application deadline has passed, the Research Council will check that the formal requirements for the application have been met. Applications that do not meet these requirements may be rejected.   

The Research Council 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 Common Commission on Research Integrity, the organisations commission on research integrity, or the National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct in the last two years prior to the submitted application.   

Where the requirements are met, the Research Council will make the application, with all mandatory attachments, available to the members of the scientific committee for assessment.  

Application assessment process for SFF-VI, Phase 1  

Scientific committee for Phase 1  

The applications submitted during Phase 1 will be assessed by a scientific committee consisting of three subcommittees. The consolidated scientific committee proposes a list of applications to be invited to advance to Phase 2.  

The members of the scientific committee will not have specialist expertise in the thematic area or topic of each grant application but will have extensive research experience at a high international level, as well as experience leading large-scale research activities. None of the members may hold a permanent position as an employee in Norway. The scientific committee will comprise 33 members and consists of three subcommittees of 11 members each.  

The members of the scientific committee have been appointed, and names of the members is published (Vitenskapelig komité for Sentre for fremragende forskning – SFF VI – Trinn 1)  

Three subcommittees  

The Scientific Committee in Phase 1 consists of three subcommittees:  

• Humanities and Social Sciences  
• Life Sciences  
• Natural Sciences and Technology   

The three subcommittees will have virtual meetings that are held simultaneously. Each grant application will be discussed primarily in one or two subcommittees. The committee members will read the grant applications prior to the meeting. A principal assessor together with at least three additional subcommittee members will be assigned for each grant application. The assigned assessors will provide a written assessment prior to the meeting addressing each of the assessment criteria. At the meeting, each grant application will be discussed, and the subcommittee will prepare a brief joint assessment.  

The subcommittees assign a mark for each assessment criteria. The scientific committee will rank grant applications with a woman centre director higher when applications are otherwise considered to be equally good according to the assessment criteria (moderate gender quotas). A centre is considered to have a woman centre director, if a woman holds the position at the start of the centre, or if a named woman director is planned to take over when at least half of the centre’s duration remains.   

Each subcommittee will prepare a ranked list of grant applications to be invited for advancement to Phase 2.  

Assessment process for interdisciplinary applications in Phase 1  

On the first page of the project description, the centre directors must specify which of the three subcommittees they want the application to be assessed by. Each subcommittee is comprised of members from a wide range of fields and will therefore also assess some interdisciplinary applications. Interdisciplinary applications extending across multiple subcommittees may select two subcommittees for the review process, specifying one of them as the primary subcommittee. In this case, each subcommittee will focus on the research that falls within its area of expertise. If one of the subcommittees finds the grant application to be very good, an interdisciplinary panel will be set up. This panel will comprise 4-6 subcommittee members, each of whom has been responsible for a written assessment of the application. The interdisciplinary panel’s joint assessment will be returned to the primary subcommittee, which will take this assessment into account when drawing up a ranked list of grant applications to be invited for advancement to Phase 2.  

Meetings of the Scientific Committee for Phase 1  

Once all the applications have been discussed in subcommittees and interdisciplinary panels, and the subcommittees have drawn up their ranking lists, they will come together for a joint meeting as the consolidated scientific committee. It is the responsibility of the consolidated scientific committee to ensure that very good interdisciplinary applications that have been reviewed by two subcommittees receive the necessary attention in the joint discussion. At the end of the meeting, the consolidated scientific committee will propose a list of 36 applicants to be invited to advance to Phase 2.  

The seven (7) best applications from each subcommittee (Life Sciences, Natural Sciences and Technology, and Humanities and Social Sciences) will be listed for the top positions. This means that positions 1–21 on the list are reserved for the seven highest-ranked applications within each subcommittee, based on scientific assessment. The scientific committee in Phase 1 then prioritises applications for positions 22–36 according to scientific assessment, regardless of subcommittee. In cases of equal scientific assessment between applications, moderate gender quotas are applied, and applications with a woman centre director are prioritised over applications with a man centre director.

Final decision in Phase 1 

The administration prepares a recommendation for which applicants should be invited to Phase 2, based on the ranked list from the scientific committee in Phase 1. The Portfolio Board for Ground-breaking Research will first determine whether to approve the application assessment process for Phase 1. If the process is approved, the portfolio board will make the final decisions regarding which applicants will be invited to advance to Phase 2. Should a conflict of interest arise among the members of the portfolio board, substitute members will be appointed if necessary.  

Feedback to the applicant after Phase 1  

The joint assessment prepared for each grant application in the subcommittees will be sent as feedback to the applicants, along with marks for each criterion. Applicants who are not invited to participate in Phase 2 will not receive any additional scientific explanation of why their grant application was rejected.  

Application assessment process for SFF-VI, Phase 2  

Please find a preliminary version for the planned call for SFF-VI Phase 2 here. The application deadline for Phase 2 will be in 2026.  

We expect to announce which applications will receive funding by autumn 2027.