Frequently asked questions about Explore 2025

This call has specific requirements for administrating organisations. Only Swedish higher education institutions, certain research institutes and government agencies with research missions are approved. The administrating organisation must also be approved for all types of calls at Formas when the application is registered.

Who can become an administrating organisation?

There is no clear definition of a research institute. Therefore, we have set out a number of criteria to determine which organisations can be approved as administrating organisations in Explore.

• The organisation must have research as its primary activity.
  • Research means the development of new scientific knowledge.
  • New scientific knowledge refers to knowledge that has been peer-reviewed, or other similar procedure established in the field of research, and approved by such a procedure.
• The organisation must be well established as a research performer in Sweden.
  • Established means that the organisation has been active as a research performer in Sweden for a long time or is part of an organisation that meets this requirement.
• The organisation must employ researchers with doctoral degrees to the extent justified by the organisation's activities. These researchers must be employed and active as researchers. They also need to be well established both nationally and internationally.
  • Employee means that an employment relationship exists between the organisation as employer and the researcher as employee. Affiliations or similar are not considered employment.
  • Active as researchers means that the persons devote most of their working time to developing new scientific knowledge.
  • Well established nationally and internationally means participation in scientific conferences and seminars, publication and review work in scientific journals, or similar.

If you would like us to assess your organisation, please send an email to explore@formas.se describing how you meet the above criteria.

The following research institutes have been assessed against the criteria and are approved as administrating organisations in Explore 2025:

• The Beijer Institute at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
• The Institute for Futures Studies
• IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute
• Nordregio
• RISE Research Institutes of Sweden AB
• SEI - Stockholm Environment Institute
• Skogforsk - The Forestry Research Institute of Sweden

Organisations are assessed against the criteria by the call management for Explore 2025 together with the department head responsible for the call.

If you would like us to assess your organisation, please send an email to explore@formas.se and describe how you meet the criteria above.

An agency with a research mission refers to all government agencies that, according to their instructions, are to carry out research, as well as university hospitals in the regions included in the ALF agreement.

Clinical research in the ALF regions External link.

Career age is defined here as the time elapsed between the award of a doctoral degree and the closing date of the call.

To have a career age of at least four years in this call, the main applicant needs to have received their doctoral degree by 1 October 2021.

Career age is defined here as the time that has elapsed from when a person has received their doctoral degree until the call closes. In this call, career age is not affected by parental leave, military service, sick leave, etc.

It is the date that appears on your diploma.

In order to be a main applicant in this call, the following is required:

• You have a career age of at least four years.
• You have an activity rate in the project of at least 20 per cent. This can be funded through the grant applied for or other sources, or through a combination of these.
• You will be the project leader of the project.
• You will be employed by the administrating organisation from the start of the project until the project has been completed and reported to Formas.
• You are not the project leader for an ongoing project that has been granted funding under one of Formas' researcher-initiated calls.
• You are not the main applicant for another application to Explore 2025.

You cannot be the main applicant in this call if any of the following apply:

• You have a career age of less than four years.
• You will not have an activity rate in the project of at least 20 per cent.
• You will not be the project leader of the project.
• You will not be employed by the administrating organisation from the start of the project until the project has been completed and reported to Formas.
• You are the project leader for an ongoing project that has been granted funding within one of Formas' researcher-initiated calls.
• You are the main applicant for another application to Explore 2025.

No, you do not need to be employed by your administrating organisation at the time of application, but you must be employed for the entire duration of the project, including the period of availability and until the project is finally reported to Formas.

Participating researchers are researchers with a doctoral degree who contribute significantly to the implementation of the project. A participating researcher is invited to the application in Prisma. Only main applicants and participating researchers can attach their academic profile and CV to the application.

Participating researchers must have received their doctoral degree by the closing date of the call.

• Each application may have a maximum of four participating researchers.
• Participating researchers are the researchers who are most relevant to the project and who contribute significantly to its realisation. Participating researchers are considered co-applicants for the project.
• Participating researchers must have obtained a doctoral degree by the closing date of the call.
• There is no upper age limit for participating researchers, but full-time retired researchers are not eligible for salary support.

Project participants are those persons who contribute to the realisation of the project and who are paid within the project, either through the grant applied for or in-kind. Persons engaged through purchased services are not considered project participants.

Project participants include, for example, project leaders, participating researchers, doctoral students and other staff. In the budget section of your application, you must indicate the role of each person involved in the project.

In the budget section of your application, you must indicate the role of each person involved in the project. The following roles are available to choose from:

• Project leader. The project leader is ultimately responsible for the implementation of the project. You choose this role for the main applicant. The main applicant must be the project leader. You can only have one project leader per project.
• Participating researcher. You choose this role for the researchers with a doctoral degree who contribute significantly to the realisation of the project. Participating researchers are considered co-applicants for the project.
• Post-doc. Use this role if you are recruiting a post-doc to the project.
• Doctoral student. Use this role if you are recruiting a doctoral student to the project.
• Other doctoral staff. This role is used for people who contribute to the project but to a more limited extent than participating researchers. This category can also be used for project participants with a doctorate who are recruited at the start of the project, and who will not be employed as post-docs.
• Other non-doctoral staff. This role is used for people who contribute to the project but do not have a doctorate. Examples include research assistants, lab assistants, technicians, etc.

Persons employed by companies or other organisations with economic activities cannot receive funding from this call. Funds for such persons must therefore not be included in the budget for which you are applying. Exceptions are made only for those research institutes and government agencies with research missions that are approved as administrating organisations in Explore 2025.

Yes, people working and employed in companies or other organisations with economic activities can participate in the project if they are funded from other sources, such as in-kind.

You can apply for funding and participate in projects as long as you participate through your employment at the university. For people with several positions, it needs to be clearly stated in the application through which position they participate in the project.

Yes, it is possible to be a participating researcher, even if you do not currently have a job. However, you need to be employed at the start of the grant period and for the duration of the grant period and the availability period. It is important that the application clearly states which organisation you will be employed by when you carry out the research that the funds applied for will finance.

It is possible to apply for funding for doctoral students and post-docs. You can apply for funding for project-related salaries, operating costs, premises costs and indirect costs. Funds are granted for annual salary increases.

It is possible to apply for funding for a currently unknown project participant recruited at the start of the project. In Prisma, you select the appropriate role for the participant, for example doctoral student, post-doc or other doctoral staff. Unknown project participants cannot have the role of participating researcher.

Just as for other, known project participants, you need to describe what the intended project participant will do in the project, and what skills and experience the project participant needs to have. You do this in the project description.

Other doctoral staff are people who contribute to the project but to a limited extent. This category can also be used for PhD project participants recruited at the start of the project, who will not be employed as post docs.

You may use a maximum of 15 per cent of the project budget to fund project participants employed in countries other than Sweden. The 15 per cent limit applies on average over the duration of the project.

Project participants include main applicants, participating researchers, PhD students and other staff. Persons engaged through purchased services are not counted as project participants.

Any parts of the project carried out by project participants based in countries other than Sweden must be well justified.

Yes, research services, technical expertise, consultancy and similar services can be purchased. These should be purchased or licensed from external providers on market terms and used exclusively for the project. In the budget, you recognise such costs as operating costs. Purchased services are reported excluding VAT. Operating costs must be itemised in accordance with the practices of the administrating organisation. For purchased services, the required competences as well as the scope and forms of participation should be described in the budget specification.

This is determined by Formas' instruction (Regulation 2009:1024). It states that Formas shall promote and support basic research and needs-driven research in the fields of environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning.

Formas' areas of responsibility should not be considered as three separate areas. Knowledge needs often concern complex issues that are at the intersection of the environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning, or that are cross-cutting. They may concern people's attitudes to sustainability challenges and how these are expressed in everyday life, cultural expressions, organisations and politics - in the past, present and future. It can also be about issues of norms, practices and values at the individual, group or system level, or issues of policy instruments, regulations and political decisions.

Formas funds research in all disciplines and combinations of disciplines - as long as the project makes a clear contribution to our areas of responsibility. For some research fields, it is almost inevitable that projects contribute to our areas of responsibility. For example, it is difficult to imagine a project in climate modelling that does not contribute to the field of environment, a project on forestry methods that does not contribute to agricultural sciences, or a project on urban design that does not contribute to spatial planning. In other fields of research, projects can sometimes contribute to our responsibilities and sometimes not, depending on what is being studied, how it is being studied and why. Political science, microbiology, public health, economics and applied physics are just a few examples of research fields that can address issues within our areas of responsibility, but also completely different issues. This means that we always have to look at the project itself, rather than the field of research, when deciding whether a project is 'within' our areas of responsibility or not.

No, the assessment of whether a project idea is within Formas' areas of responsibility is only made based on a final registered application. This is partly because we need a complete application to determine how extensive and relevant the grant is. But it is also a matter of legal certainty. Before you have registered your application, you can make both major and minor changes. If we have given a positive preliminary assessment and you then change your application, we may need to change our assessment.

If you are unsure whether your project idea falls within Formas' areas of responsibility or not, we recommend that you get help from a colleague and ask them to read your application with constructive and critical eyes. You can also contact the Grants office or similar function within your organisation.

No, in this call the project duration is fixed at 48 months. It is not possible to apply for shorter or longer projects. The project must be clearly planned to last for the entire duration of the project, for example by having planned activities and costs for all 48 months.

Yes, you can. In the budget, you can add the salary increase per year or calculate an average. Describe clearly in the budget specification how you have calculated.

You can be the main applicant in both Career Grant for Early Career Researchers and Explore, provided that you fulfil the conditions for who can apply in both of these calls.

If you are the main applicant for a project awarded funding in Career Grant 2025 and have submitted an application as main applicant for Explore 2025, you need to withdraw one of these applications. The same applies if you are awarded funding in Explore 2025 and have submitted an application to Career Grant 2026.

It is possible to submit the same or a similar application to Explore that you have submitted to another call - provided that the application you submitted to another call has not been granted funding.

If both applications are funded, you may have to withdraw one of them, depending on how similar the applications are.

However, your application may not include costs for purposes that have already been funded by Formas or another funding body. Applications that are entirely or largely the same as an application that has been granted funding by Formas, or another funder, will be rejected.

We do not allow changes to final registered applications. In other words, you cannot change your application to Explore, in order to reduce the overlap with another application.

It is also the case that the amount you can be awarded for the salary of an individual researcher, doctoral student or other staff may never exceed 100 per cent of a full-time position. This also means that someone who has full salary funding from one funder for the entire duration of the project cannot receive additional funding for salary.

You can only be the main applicant for one Explore application.

It is not allowed to submit the same application with different main applicants. All final registered applications, which have similar content, will be rejected.

Yes, you can be a participating researcher in more than one application. However, salary amounts in granted projects from Formas or other funding bodies cannot exceed 100 per cent of a full-time position.

You may not be the main applicant in this call if you are the project leader of an ongoing project granted in one of Formas' researcher-initiated calls and that has a grant period that includes 2026.

Formas' researcher-initiated calls include:

• Mobility Grant for Early-Career Researchers.
• The Annual open call.
• The Career Grant for Early-Career Researchers.
• Explore - Formas' open call for research projects.

Applications where the project leader has an ongoing project from one of Formas' researcher-initiated calls and a grant period that includes 2026 will be rejected.

A project is considered ongoing during its grant period, i.e. during the years when funds are paid out from Formas. The document Approval of terms, which the main applicant (project leader) received in Prisma when the grant decision was taken, contains information about the grant period.

If the project has a grant period that includes one or more payments during 2026, it is considered ongoing during 2026.

How to find the document Approval of terms in Prisma:

1. Go to the "Applications and grants" tab in your Prisma account.
2. In the left-hand menu, click on "Grants"
3. Under "Granted applications", access the current project by clicking on "Details"
4. Under the "Signing", you can download the "Acceptance of terms " by clicking on "Download".

The document Approval of terms (Godkännande av villkor in Swedish), which the main applicant received in Prisma when the grant decision was taken, contains information about focus area “inriktning” under which the project was funded.

If it says "researcher-initiated" under the “inriktning”, your project is subject to the restriction regarding ongoing projects.

This is how you find the document “Godkännande av villkor” in Prisma:

1. Go to the tab "Applications and grants" in your account in Prisma
2. In the left-hand menu, click on "Grants"
3. Under "Granted applications", access the current project by clicking on "Details"
4. Under the heading "Signing", you can download the "Approval of terms" by clicking on the "Download" link

A project is considered ongoing during its grant period, i.e. during the years when funds are paid out from Formas. If the project's grant period has passed but the availability period still runs during 2026, you can be the main applicant in the call.

There is a relevant difference between, on the one hand, describing and reflecting on the scientific starting points of the project in terms of which theories, methods, empirical material, and/or contexts have been chosen and why, and, on the other hand, describing how this is intended to be translated into practical research.

For some disciplines and projects, it may not come naturally to take a few steps back from the execution, and describe and reflect on the choice of theory, method, empirical material and/or context. However, we see that there are several advantages in doing so, not least to give the reviewers the best possible conditions for assessing the project.

An academic profile is a form of narrative CV where you can describe your knowledge, experience and qualifications in more detail. The academic profile acts as a bridge between the project description and the more traditional CV.

The project description, academic profile and CV complement each other. In the project description, the reviewer should be able to identify the competences present in the project team and how this contributes to the implementation of the project. The academic profile and CV focus on individuals. Here, the main applicant and participating researchers describe their competences and experience in more detail. This gives the reviewer a clearer picture of the key individuals and the extent to which they have the competences and experience required to carry out the project.

• The project description. Here you describe how the competences of the project team together fulfil what is required to carry out the project. For project participants who are not principal applicants or collaborating researchers, this is the only place you can describe their competences. For project participants who are not yet named, for example if a doctoral student is to be recruited, write what competences that person will bring to the project.
• Academic profile. Here, the main applicant and participating researchers describe their respective competences and experience in more detail. Feel free to give concrete examples and refer to relevant qualifications and/or publications added to the CV section.
• CV. This is where the main applicant and participating researchers add relevant qualifications and publications. These serve as a basis or "proof" of the competences and experience described in the academic profile and project description. In the CV, you can add information on education and work experience. You can also add up to 10 qualifications and up to 10 publications. Qualifications can include documented experience in collaboration, open science, research communication, project management, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary work, supervision of doctoral students, etc. Publications can be scientific articles, reports, books or other.

It is up to you to decide what level of detail you want to use. One tip is to try to put yourself in the reviewers’ situation and ask yourself what level of detail they need to assess whether you have the skills needed to successfully implement the project. Too little detail can make it difficult to understand your skills, knowledge and experience. Too much detail can obscure key information, making it difficult to discern what is most important.

The way in which applicants describe their knowledge, experience and qualifications must be appropriate in relation to the purpose and objectives of the call. The decision to use an academic profile has been made based on the following:

• Formas funds research in a wide range of disciplines and fields. Different disciplines and research fields lead to different types of results, have different ways of publishing, and different merit systems. To create equitable conditions, applicants need to be able to decide for themselves which experiences, contributions and achievements they want to recognise, and in what order.
• The ongoing movement towards - and transition to - an open science system requires new types of scientific assessments that recognise the full range of outputs and contributions of research and innovation. These may include, for example, different types of publications, knowledge dissemination and education, open data, patents, contributions to policy, or other forms of utilisation of research. The applicant therefore needs to be able to describe a diversity of results and contributions, in equivalent ways.
• The competence of the project participants must be assessed in relation to the project applied for. The applicant must therefore be able to describe and justify how the experience, contributions and qualifications cited are relevant to the project applied for.

Yes, Explore is connected to Weave.

Weave - simplified funding procedures for projects across European borders

In Explore 2025, we will create review panels inductively, also called bottom-up, based on the applications that submitted applications.

One reason is to create better conditions for assessing projects that are at the intersection of different fields of knowledge and subject matters. Another reason is that the previous review panels did not adequately represent the breadth of research within Formas' areas of responsibility. A third reason is to avoid structures that can steer and restrict research. By creating review panels inductively, these can be better adapted to the research front.

Partial randomisation is a method for selecting which applications should receive funding, where some applications are chosen by chance. Partial randomisation has been developed as a way to address or mitigate the challenges and limitations that peer review may entail.

Partial randomisation can be carried out in many ways, depending on the intended outcome and on how much influence one wants peer review to have on the final decision (Shaw 2023). For most funders who have tested partial randomisation, it does not replace peer review but complements it.

“Partial randomisation offered a tool to improve their selection procedures while maintaining the core mechanism for the necessary quality control: expert reviewers’ judgement.” (Bendiscioli et al. 2022, p. 72).

If one wants to keep peer review as the core of the evaluation process, then partial randomisation with cut-offs at the top and at the bottom is the recommended and most widely used model (Shaw 2023). This means that, following peer review, applications are divided into groups based on their quality:

• Group 1: Applications of outstanding quality are not subject to randomisation – these are granted funding.
• Group 2: Applications of high and equivalent quality – here, randomisation is used to decide which are granted funding and which are rejected.
• Group 3: Applications that are not competitive or of low quality – these are rejected.

Thus, only applications in Group 2 undergo randomisation, hence the name “partial randomisation”. Group 2 corresponds to what is often referred to in the literature on partial randomisation as the “grey zone,” and comprises one of the main reasons why partial randomisation is expected to strengthen fairness in the assessment process:

“One of the limits of peer review is the inability to make absolute rankings when [applications] are very similar. This happens in particular after a first peer reviewed selection or ranking of a short-list of proposals that will definitely be funded, and rejection of those proposals that will definitely not be funded. In between these extremes, there is a “grey zone” of applications that differ so little from each other that they can essentially be considered equal in quality, and peer reviewers have difficulties in selecting among them.” (Bendiscoli & Garfinkel 2021, p.5)

The most common reason for using partial randomisation is to make evaluation processes fairer and more transparent (Woods & Wilsdon 2021). In calls that attract a large number of applications from different research fields, where many applications are of high quality, and where innovativeness and originality are key qualities, there is a high risk that certain limitations will arise, negatively affecting the quality of the assessment process:

• Reviewers have a limited ability to reliably to detect small differences in quality between applications of equivalent quality.
• A review panel may include applications that are so diverse that it is impossible to compare them.
• The combined expertise of a review panel cannot equally cover all research fields, particularly in calls that invite projects from a wide range of disciplines.
• Reviewers tend to favour less risky, more conventional projects, especially in processes requiring consensus.

These limitations can affect the quality of the review process in several ways, both in terms of fairness and fitness for purpose:

• An increased risk that conscious or unconscious bias influences selection.
• An increased risk that uncontrolled chance influences selection.
• Niche or underrepresented fields may have less chance of receiving funding.
• Bold, risky, or unconventional projects may have less chance of receiving funding.

In Explore, the number of excellent applications far exceeds the number that can be granted funding. This means that all the applications that would otherwise have been discussed at a panel meeting – had Formas’ usual review process been used – are of such high quality that it is almost impossible to identify relevant differences between them fairly and reliably. Comparisons are made even more difficult by the fact that applications in Explore come from a diversity of research fields, which poses further challenges for equal assessment.

Taken together, this creates a situation where there is a high risk that uncontrolled chance and different forms of bias (both conscious and unconscious) influence the outcome, and where reviewers have a hard time justifying clearly and objectively why one application should be prioritised over another. In such a situation, partial randomisation helps make the selection clear, predictable, and fair, since all applications of equivalent quality have the same chance of success.

In Explore, we want to keep peer review as the core of the review process. We will therefore use partial randomisation with cut-offs at the top and at the bottom. The cut-offs are defined by threshold criteria that determine whether an application goes directly to funding, into randomisation, or directly to rejection.

The thresholds are defined to ensure that the applications in the randomisation group are of equal qualities. In Explore, the thresholds will consist of a combination of standardised grades and a priority value. The reason we use standardized scores is to account for the fact that reviewers apply the rating scale differently. The priority value complements the scores and provides an overall assessment of how competitive an application is considered to be.

Randomisation can be done in several ways. First, one must decide whether all applications should have the same chance of success (unweighted randomisation) or whether randomisation should be conducted in such a way that the distribution of funded applications follows a specific principle (weighted randomisation). For example, this could involve ensuring that women and men have the same success rates, or that a portfolio perspective is applied across disciplines or research fields.

Second, one must also decide how the randomisation itself is to be conducted. Here, the choice is between physical drawing of lots or using software. The advantage of physical drawing is that everyone observing the process can easily understand what is happening. The disadvantage is that it may, in some respects, be more difficult to document the process and to ensure that nothing other than chance influenced the outcome. If software is used, it is easy to document the process and to verify that nothing other than chance affected the selection. The disadvantage is that it becomes harder for someone without prior knowledge to understand the process.

In Explore, randomisation will be carried out in R, a free and open software environment. An advantage of using R, or similar methods of pseudo-randomisation, is that the process can be replicated. Anyone with access to R and the randomisation information (registration numbers, seed, code, etc.) can repeat the procedure and obtain the same result.

All information on the randomisation, including seeds etc., is logged and archived, meaning that anyone interested can request access to the information.

In other calls, the limitations of peer review are not a problem in the same way as in Explore. These may be targeted calls where the applications are more similar, where the number of applications is not so large, or where innovation and risk-taking are not central factors.

We do not prohibit you from using generative AI when developing or writing your application. Also, you do not have to state whether you have used generative AI.

However, you need to be vigilant. Generative AI can plagiarise both itself and other texts without stating the source. Generative AI can also "hallucinate", that is, make up facts that are incorrect and references that do not exist. AI also tends to reproduce various forms of bias, for example regarding sex and gender.

It is your responsibility as an applicant to ensure that all content in your application is correct.