The date of the call is preliminary and may be revised. The call description will continue to be revised and made more precis until the call opens for applications.
Achieving a sustainable society requires drastically increasing the reuse of resources and drastically decreasing climate emissions in the built environment, both in terms of new construction and within the existing stock of buildings and the infrastructure surrounding them. This in turn requires knowledge, expertise and approaches that can lead to structural changes that transform spatial planning.
The call is an initiative within the framework for the National Research Programme for Sustainable Spatial Planning and is intended to improve the long-term knowledge development and continuing professional development required to achieve a sustainable, circular and resource-efficient built environment. A coordinator for long-term exchange and learning will coordinate awarded projects to amplify the eventual impact of the individual projects.
Spatial planning including buildings, construction and infrastructure plays a key role in meeting challenges related to resource efficiency, circularity, climate impact, and other environmental aspects. Globally, the use of materials has more than tripled in the last 50 years, and the increasing extraction of natural resources is leading to an increasingly negative impact on both climate and ecosystems over time. The construction, property, and facility sectors utilise a large proportion of the world’s extracted natural and energy resources, and the largest part of these go to new construction.
Construction and the utilisation of existing built environment, facilities, and infrastructure need to profoundly change at the structural level. This will require multiple shifts with major changes and changes in attitudes in processes related to the built environment. It is vital to manage and utilise existing buildings. Demolition of existing buildings should be reduced, and new construction needs to change from being the first choice to being the last option. The buildings that are built need to be of high quality, be flexible, and be resource efficient to allow them to be used as long as possible. Extensive change is needed in everything from the planning and design of buildings and issues related to procurements, financial models and incentives, planning and design, and construction to repairs, reconstruction, demolition, and reuse. This also includes aspects of technical and material development and questions of logistics, transports, and infrastructures. Current practices, organisation, cultures, regulations, and institutional structures are key elements in bringing about change in construction.
The purpose of the call is to support and strengthen long-term knowledge development and skills enhancement by supporting projects that can enable new approaches, broaden perspectives, and propose system-related solutions needed to create change. The call is thus aimed at projects with participants who can provide knowledge, expertise, solutions, and work approaches that can contribute to and be a part of the larger structural changes needed to achieve a sustainable, circular, and resource-efficient built environment.
Spatial planning, particularly focused on the construction, property, and facility sectors, needs large-scale transformation. In Sweden, the housing and service sector accounts for a third of all energy use, and the construction sector accounts for about 22 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. The EU’s Performance of Buildings Directive means that by 2050 all existing buildings need to have achieved zero emissions.
Several structural shifts are needed to achieve a sustainable, circular, and resource-efficient built environment in response to future societal challenges. There is a massive need to improve innovative capacity in spatial planning and construction. There are existing initiatives in creating a circular and resource-efficient built environment, but it is often challenging to scale up new solutions that become a part of established spatial planning practices. A couple of reasons for this is the lack of financial incentives and the lack of infrastructure for reusing building material, but achieving structural changes and transformation is equally about creating innovations that address or influence existing beliefs and cultures, new work approaches, and the ability to learn new things. Spatial planning is a complex system with many different types of techniques, stakeholders, and practices. Innovation and knowledge development related both to technical and to organisational, social, and behavioural parts are required to challenge and re-evaluate tried and tested ways of working and perceptions that would enable learning and new behaviour. This means that projects need to consider system-related aspects to be able to contribute new knowledge and thereby achieve structural changes within spatial planning.
One of the built environment’s greatest challenges is the use of resources and its climate impact. An important area of research and innovation is more effective resource use, including both natural and energy resources and financial and societal resources. Transitioning to a more circular built environment requires less demolition of existing buildings. To use resources more effectively, it is important to administer existing buildings and facilities, assess their qualities and potential, re-evaluate, upgrade, and rebuild. Reuse and work approaches that increase energy and resource efficiency need to become a central part of maintenance and renovation.
If demolition is unavoidable, circular construction becomes central with reuse of the resources that arise from demolition and reconstruction, including use of reused building and facility material for new products. Developing solutions and planning for and building circularly from the start also enables conservation and reuse longer into the future. Key success factors here include organisational and logistics solutions, governance, legislation and standardisation, procurement, and purchasing. This also includes questions about profitability models and material flows, value chains, producer responsibility, and management of any environmental toxins in reused building materials. These need to be developed working together with other stakeholders.
Parallel with this is the great need for innovative approaches to reducing new construction. When new buildings must be built, we need to better understand material-efficient and resource-efficient construction methods to reduce the use of new resources and to work with architectural design and to use materials, methods, and approaches that contribute to long-term management. This is why it is also important to highlight resource and energy-efficient methods and materials and/or experiment with materials from other areas of use with high resource efficiency and low climate impact that can compete with current building practices.
A central part is also developing training solutions that include all stakeholders in the construction value chain to achieve the structural changes required for a circular, resource efficient and sustainable built environment.
This call is intended to support and improve long-term knowledge development and skills enhancement for a sustainable, circular, and resource-efficient built environment. To this end, there needs to be projects that can lead to new approaches and broader perspectives and that can propose solutions which enable larger structural shifts. This means projects that take on complex questions and that can contribute with new knowledge and expertise within the project’s area. Over time, the call should be able to enable the structural shifts required within spatial planning and community building to achieve climate neutrality and to be circular and resource efficient.
This call welcomes project applications for research projects that work with clearly identified, preferably complex and system-related challenges, obstacles, and knowledge needs identified as central to achieving a sustainable, circular, and resource-efficient built environment. Projects should be broad and consist of interdisciplinary constellations that reflect multiple perspectives and methods that can contribute knowledge within organisational and knowledge gaps. But projects can also consist of narrow subject-matter constellations that contribute advanced knowledge within a complex question.
Interdisciplinarity here refers to knowledge production where researchers from different disciplines take on a jointly formulated challenge. Interdisciplinarity brings together research questions, perspectives, and methods from multiple subject areas. Interdisciplinarity can, but is not required to, aim at integrating different disciplines.
Formas strives for an equitable, gender-balanced, and inclusive societal progress. Applicants should design their projects to allow the results to benefit a diverse range of people and groups in society.
Projects in this call will have different needs for integrating with other stakeholders in the system. Project applications should strive to include stakeholders and activities for collaboration that offer added value to the project’s questions and expected contributions. This could include the project creating forums and working with activities for mutual exchanges and active dialogues with stakeholders within the private and public sectors, including municipalities, or civil society. By including activities for dialogue, communication, and real-world impact that are appropriate for the project, this should enable improved recipient capacity within the private and public sectors or civil society for knowledge that leads to a sustainable, circular, and resource-efficient built environment and transformative spatial planning.
Formas will appoint a coordinator to coordinate the call’s awarded projects. The coordinator will be responsible for bringing awarded projects together for seminars and workshops, for supporting activities for the project and relevant stakeholders outside the project, and for conducting other activities that judged relevant for amplifying the shared contribution from the awarded projects. After the decision date, stakeholders from awarded projects will be able to register interest in being appointed the coordinator, which is equivalent 15 per cent of a full-time position. This is compensated by Formas in addition to the project grant. Assessments and decisions about the coordinator are handled by Formas.
The call is intended for researchers in all disciplines at Swedish higher education institutions, research institutes or public agencies with a research mission. Formas welcomes researchers both from the social sciences and humanities and from the natural sciences and technical disciplines. In particular, this call encourages interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary projects that include and bring together multiple disciplines. Projects should be able to contribute with broad perspectives and provide both an overview and detail in the questions being studied. Projects can, but do not need to, include doctoral students.
The main applicant is to be a researcher with a PhD associated with a Swedish higher education institution, research institute, or public agency with a research mission that is a Formas-approved administrating organisation. Funds in this call can only be applied for by higher education institutions, research institutes, and public agencies with a research mission.
The project is expected to collaborate with and involve stakeholders active within the private sector, public sector, or civil society as part of the project’s implementation and in a way that is relevant and appropriate for the project’s questions. Note, however, that only higher education institutions, research institutes, and public agencies with a research mission may apply in the call.
Before you apply
All information about what to include in your application, how to apply, and the assessment process is found below.
Grants from this call may only be administered by a Swedish higher education institution, research institute, or public agency with a research mission.
Who can become an administrating organisation?
To be able to apply for a grant in this call:
- The main applicant is to have completed their doctorate (no later than the close of the call).
- Co-applicants are to have completed their doctorate (no later than the close of the call). Other staff participating in the project do not need to have completed a doctorate.
- The intended grant recipient is to be the project manager on the application.
- There is no upper age limit for main applicants and co-applicants, but full-time retired researchers cannot receive grants for salary.
- The main applicant may submit at most one application in this call. On the other hand, there is no limit to how many applications an individual can participate in.
- The same application may not be submitted with different main applicants. Applications with the same content will be rejected.
Note that companies, public agencies, or organisations without research assignments as their main mission may not apply for funding or be a project party in the application in this call.
A coordinator will coordinate awarded projects in the call. All projects awarded in this call are to participate in the joint activities organised by the call coordinator.
When applying for funding for a project, you can apply for both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs, also known as operating costs, include such expenses as salaries, equipment, and travel. Operating costs also include costs for any consultants or costs for collaborative activities. Indirect costs are costs that are shared with others in your organisation, such as for administration, IT, and renting of premises. Indirect costs are often called overhead costs.
- Grants can be for funding salaries for researchers, doctoral students, and technical staff.
- In addition to salaries, grants can fund operating costs. Running costs (also known as operating costs) include such costs as consumables, travel, and conferences. They can also include publishing in open access journals and databases that use open access. Formas awards only funding for certain types of author fees. More information is available under the section Publishing costs. Running costs can also include depreciations for equipment and premises costs. The maximum allowable amount for equipment and depreciations for equipment is SEK 500,000. Running costs are to be listed as per the administrating organisation’s standard procedure.
Running costs can include costs for purchasing services that contribute to the implementation of the project. Purchased services must be thoroughly explained, limited in extent, and constitute a limited part of the project. Running costs can also include costs for collaborative activities for mutual exchange of knowledge and experience and active dialogue with the private sector, public organisations, and civil society, including costs for participation in reference groups within the framework for the project’s implementation. It can also include costs for participation in and travel to activities organised by the call’s coordinator. - If funds are to be transferred from the administrating organisation to another organisation participating in the project, each organisation’s overhead cost can be applied. Explain and report the various overhead costs in the budget specification. The total overhead cost for the project should be listed in the budget table.
- International collaboration. Formas grants can be used to fund practicing researchers (at higher education institutions or research institutes) outside Sweden, although the project must be initiated and managed from Sweden. The administrating organisation is to be in Sweden and approved by Formas. It is responsible for hiring any necessary foreign staff and reimbursing costs for activities or services outside Sweden, as per the administrating organisation’s guidelines. Any parts of the project that are conducted outside Sweden must be thoroughly explained in relation to the project’s implementation, its limits clearly defined, and it may only constitute a limited part of the project. Additionally, explain how the results can potentially benefit spatial planning and the built environment in Sweden.
- In this call, funds are not awarded to companies or other organisations that conduct economic activity. Companies and organisations conducting economic activity may be involved in the project through collaborative activities, but they can also be hired as consultants. This assumes a procurement is conducted as per the administrating organisation’s guidelines and applicable legislation. Any contribution by consultants is to be justified and consist of a well-defined and clearly limited part of the project’s implementation.
- Organisations of any type can contribute to the project in-kind through work performed or through co-financing. There are, however, no requirements for co-financing in the project.
Read more about costs eligible for funding.
This call allows applying for three-year or four-year projects (36 or 48 months) with an average annual budget of SEK 3 million and a total maximum budget of SEK 9 million for three-year projects and SEK 12 million for four-year projects.
Please note that the total amount of salary received for individual researchers, doctoral students, or other staff may not exceed 100 per cent of full-time employment. This means that additional funds for salary cannot be granted for researchers, doctoral students, or other staff who already receive a grant with complete salary funding.
The project start is 1 July 2025, and the start date is set by default in Prisma. The project has an availability period of 12 months. This means that the project has an additional year after the project duration ends to complete the project. This also means that the project start can be delayed up to 12 months and the project will still be able to be completed in the specified time.
You should write your application in English, as the review panel that will assess the application is international. If you write your application in Swedish, Formas will only translate the project description. The translation will be done by a professional translator. You will not be able to change the translation before the application proceeds to assessment.
The budget specification, CVs and academic profiles will not be translated. For this reason, please write these in English, even if you fill in the application in the Swedish version of the application system.
The popular science description must be written in Swedish, while the abstract is to be in both Swedish and English.
According to Swedish law, your application and its appendices are considered public documents once they have been submitted to us. This means that anyone can request and read your application. Information can only be concealed if it is confidential as defined in the Public Access to Information and Secrecy Act (2009:400).
Formas is limited in its ability to designate personal data as confidential. For this reason, your application should not contain the personal data of anyone who is not included in the application.
If the project is awarded funding, the popular science description and project abstracts in Swedish and English will be published in open-access project databases without a confidentiality review. For this reason, the contents of these fields should not include sensitive information.
Currently, we do not see any problems with you, the applicant, using AI to assist you when formulating your application. However, it is important that you are aware that the responsibility for fulfilling the commitments made in the application remains with you, the applicant. As an applicant, you are responsible for ensuring that the contents of both the application and the project plan are correct and that the research is conducted as described. Applicants certify this when registering their application. As the applicant, you are always expected to follow good research practice in the application process, which means that plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication of content in the application may not occur.
At Formas, we strive to fund projects that maximise positive while minimising negative impacts on the environment and climate. As such, we encourage grant applicants to design their projects to enable primarily online collaboration and that any necessary travel minimises climate impact as much as possible. We also suggest that your project planning includes measures that minimise energy use and other resource consumption, emissions, and waste. However, this is not part of the assessment of your application.
Read about Sustainability at Formas.
How to apply
Grant applications are filled in and submitted in our application system, Prisma. This is where you input the information needed for your application. You will need a personal account to do this. It is recommended to create an account and begin filling in the application as soon as possible and to contact Formas with any questions well in advance. The application can be saved as a draft and be edited up until the closing of the call.
Apply for a personal account in Prisma
External link.
Co-applicants whose CV and academic profile will be included in the application also need to have a personal account. The project leader invites co-applicants to the application in Prisma.
To be able to register an application, the main applicant must have a Formas-approved administrating organisation for all types of calls. Higher education institutions, most research institutes, and public agencies with research missions are approved as administrating organisations for all Formas calls and already have an organisation account.
Become an administrating organisation for all types of calls
All limits for the maximum number of characters refer to characters including spaces. We recommend using the font Arial with font size 12 for the information entered in all text boxes.
Please note that text written in a word processer and then pasted into your application in Prisma may lose formatting. Tables and figures with advanced formatting or formulas should be uploaded as attachments to avoid the risk of losing valuable information.
Your application must include a clear description of the project under the following sections:
Basic information
- Number of applied for months: 36 or 48 months (3 or 4 years).
- Start month 1 July 2025. Note that the project’s start month is predefined in Prisma and cannot be changed.
- Project title in Swedish and English (max. 200 characters including spaces).
- Popular science description in Swedish (max. 4,500 characters including spaces). Describe what the project is about, why it is important to investigate the topic, and how you intend to implement the project. Write so that even a non-researcher can understand what the project is about.
- Abstract in Swedish and English (max. 1,500 characters including spaces). Describe the goals and purpose, how the project will be conducted, and why it is important that the project be conducted.
If the application is granted funding, the project summaries and the popular science descriptions will be published in open project databases without checking for confidentiality. For this reason, the contents of these fields should not include sensitive information. Write so that even non-researchers can understand what the project is about.
Project description
When filling in the project description, base the description on the call’s purpose and focus. The project description must clearly describe the project based on the assessment criteria under “How does the assessment process work?”. Address all the criteria in your application.
The project description should include the following information:
Relevance & societal impact (max. 8,000 characters including spaces)
Background
- Describe the project’s background and context so that even someone not previously familiar with the field can understand the project, what it will contribute, and its relevance.
- Describe and characterise the challenge addressed by the project, previous scientific findings and results and the lessons learned from them.
Purpose and goals
- Describe the project’s purpose and goals and how these can contribute to achieving the call’s purpose and focus or how they can develop or challenge the current state of knowledge within the call’s area.
Societal impact
- Describe the societal impact the project can contribute to in the short and long term, what is required to achieve this, and which groups will benefit.
- Describe the project’s potential for contributing new scientific knowledge and expertise and in what way this can contribute to structural changes within the call’s area.
- Describe how and where dissemination and/or scaling of the project’s results should occur to realise societal impact.
Participants and stakeholders (max. 5,000 characters including spaces)
- Describe and explain choice of the project participants, what expertise and experience they bring to the project, and the project parts they will contribute.
- Describe how the interests of the private sector, public sector, or civil society and other end users will be considered in the project.
- Describe the project team’s composition, including any partners and the division of influence, and reflect over how this approach contributes to gender equality and an equitable and inclusive societal progress.
Implementation (max. 12,000 characters including spaces)
- Describe the project and explain how it will be conducted using, for example, work packages, activities, methods, work plans, and schedule.
- Describe relevant risks and how the project plans to handle these.
- Describe how the project will work with cooperation, dialogue, and exchange with relevant stakeholders during the project duration and how the project will promote this, such as through a plan with activities describing how and when the project will work with this during its implementation.
- Describe how gender equality, equity, and diversity are integrated into the project’s implementation, including in the plan for collaboration.
References (max. 5,000 characters including spaces)
List the references used in the project description. It is preferred for you to use either the Harvard or Vancouver reference format. Provide DOI numbers when available.
Budget
The project’s budget is provided in Prisma. Note that the budget and budget specification should be written in English. If the budget specification is in Swedish, it will not be translated and will be assessed by the international review panel as is. In Prisma, write out the total amount you are applying for in Swedish kronor using digits. SEK 1,000,000
The budget is divided into:
- Salaries, including social contributions for each project participant. The amount you may be awarded for the salaries of each researcher, doctoral student, and other staff may never exceed 100 per cent of full-time employment. This also means that an individual with full salary funding during the entire project duration may not receive additional salary funding. Researchers who are full-time pensioners cannot receive funding for their own salary.
- Percentage of salary refers to the per cent of the applicant’s full-time salary that corresponds to the salary in the project.
- Degree of activity in the project refers to the percentage of a full-time position the participant will be contributing. This shows whether the applicant is contributing in-kind or with other funding to complete the project.
- Running costs include such costs as consumables, travel, and conferences. They can also include publishing in open access journals and databases that use open access. Formas awards only funding for certain types of author fees. Read more about this under the section Publishing costs External link.. Specify running costs according to the administrating organisation’s standard procedure. Running costs also includes purchased services, such as consulting services. Purchased services are booked excluding VAT. This can also include costs for any collaborative activities during the project’s implementation and participation in joint activities, such as those organised by the call coordinator. Running costs are to be listed as per the administrating organisation’s standard procedure.
- Equipment and depreciations. List equipment costs and depreciations for equipment if relevant to the application. You may be awarded at most SEK 500,000 for equipment and depreciations for equipment.
- You can apply for funds for premises costs if they are not already included in the overhead cost in the project budget. List premises costs as per the administrating organisation’s standard procedure.
- Total applied for/Subtotal refers to costs already included in the previous budget tables and that will automatically be transferred to this table.
- Indirect costs refers to overhead costs. When entering overhead costs in the application, do so as per the administrating organisation’s standard procedure. If funds are to be transferred from the administrating organisation to another organisation participating in the project, the receiving organisation’s overhead cost can instead be applied to these funds. Formas does not grant funding for overhead costs written off for equipment or premises. Explain and report the various overhead costs in the budget specification. The total overhead cost for the project should be listed in the budget table.
- Other cost refers to funds that are not applied for but are relevant for completing the project. This may involve co-funding from participating organisations or collaborators. Also indicate if the project is receiving funding from other sources.
- Total cost refers to a budget total.
- Budget specification is a description and explanation of the applied for budget and is included in the assessment of the project. Describe the project’s total budget, including funding from any other sources. All costs are to be specified and explained. It should be clear how the budget has been calculated. State how the applied for amount is divided in amounts per year and the total amount per organisation, if relevant.
Ethics
Consider your project from a research ethics perspective. This includes both questions related to people who are researched or affected by the research and other stakeholders, and about the researcher’s relationship to the project’s research task. This could be animal experiment ethics, privacy issues, how findings are used, whose interests are considered in the research, and how research material and findings are made accessible.
Describe which ethical issues are relevant for your project. Describe how you plan to handle the ethical aspects of the project. Describe how you balance different legitimate interests, such as the interest in knowledge as opposed to the interest in privacy. Describe how you have considered the relevant needs and circumstances of different groups in society when designing the project. If no ethical issues are relevant, you must explain this.
If you are unsure of what is meant by research ethics and ethical issues, you should familiarise yourself with this before writing this section, for example by reading the Swedish Research Council’s guide on conducting ethical research External link. and the Codex rules and guidelines for research External link..
Some research may only be conducted if it has been approved through an ethical review. If you are conducting research on people or personal data, you may need to submit an ethical review application to the Swedish Ethical Review Authority and have it approved. If you are conducting animal experiments, you also need to obtain approval from a relevant committee for animal ethics. You can apply for approval through the Swedish Board of Agriculture’s online service. Animal experiments may only be conducted when there are no alternative methods.
State in your application whether you have obtained a valid ethical approval. If you do not have one and your application is granted funding, you must have ethical approval before starting the part of the research that requires this approval. If there are no current approvals or permits, indicate this.
Classifications
Formas uses the project’s classifications in analyses and supporting documentation on an overall level. The classifications are made when the applicant states the subject area, research subject (SCB code), at least one sustainable development goal the project can contribute to, and keywords.
- Subject area
Select at least one and at most three subject areas and add a subheading.
- Research topic (SCB code)
Select at least one and at most three research topics and two sublevels that combine to form the entire code.
- Sustainable development goals
Select at least one and up to three sustainable development goals (SDGs) the project can help to achieve, in order of relevance.
More about the meaning of the goals (in Swedish). External link.
- Keywords
Enter at least one and a maximum of three keywords describing the project.
Administrating organisation – the organisation that receives the grant
In this call, only applicants from administrating organisations approved for all Formas calls may submit an application. Approved administrating organisations are listed as defaults in Prisma.
- Select your administrating organisation from the drop-down menu.
- Select project site from the dropdown list.
Co-applicants
- The main applicant invites co-applicants to the application in Prisma.
- Co-applicants are the researchers with doctorates who are most relevant for the project. Only the main applicant and co-applicants may attach their CVs to the application. Doctoral students cannot be co-applicants in the application, but the applicants may apply for funding for a doctoral student.
- All co-applicants are to have their own personal account in Prisma.
- The main applicant cannot register the application if the invited co-applicants have not accepted the invitation to participate or have not filled in the required fields correctly. Main applicants invite those who will participate in the application by searching for their first and last name and email address in Prisma. Note that names and email addresses must be spelled exactly as found in Prisma. Invited co-applicants must accept the invitation to be co-applicants.
- The main applicant can invite participating administrators to the project. Participating administrators are not involved in the project but are individuals who help you complete the application form. Participating administrators cannot register the application for final submission. Only the main applicant may do so.
CV and academic profile
In this call, parts of your CV are to be entered into Prisma and parts into the Academic profile template
, 59.9 kB., which is an appendix (Appendix 1) that you attach to the application.
Main applicants and co-applicants should fill in their academic profile well in advance and ensure their CV in Prisma is complete and up to date.
Project participants not invited to be co-applicants are not able to attach a CV via Prisma or attach an academic profile. Their expertise in relation to the project can instead be described in the project description.
CV
Only the CV items Education and Work experience can be added to the application via Prisma. Additional qualifications and contributions are described in the appendix Academic profile. Applicants should confirm well in advance that their CV in Prisma is complete and up to date. If co-applicants have not accepted the invitation to participate or have not filled in the required fields correctly, the main applicant will not be able to complete final registration of the application.
Retrieve details about your education and work experience from your personal account in Prisma. The following information is to be included with the application:
- Education
- Doctoral education
- Bachelor’s and master’s education
- Current employment and longer relevant previous employment.
- Any longer breaks in research that can be of relevance for the assessment.
Academic profile (Appendix 1)
In the template Academic profile , 59.9 kB., describe your experience, skills, and contributions that are relevant for the project.
The main applicant and any co-applicants fill in their own separate academic profile. These are then uploaded as a single PDF file under “Academic profile”. The file may not be larger than 10 MB.
The Academic profile template is only available in English and should be written in English since it will not be translated.
Other appendices
Appendix for illustrations. If you need to use maps, figures, tables, or images to describe your project idea, these can be uploaded in a single PDF in Prisma (max. 4 MB).
After submitting your application
You can make changes to your registered application (unregister it and register again) until the call closes at 14:00 CET on Wednesday 15 January 2025. After this, the status of your application will change from “registered” to “finally registered”. As long as no technical errors have been detected in Prisma, no changes may be made to the registered final version of the application. You may not make any additions, e.g. by email or by telephone. The application will be assessed as is.
When the call closes, the registered final version of your application is automatically sent to the administrating organisation for signature. The administrating organisation then has seven calendar days to sign the application digitally in Prisma.
First, Formas verifies that the application meets the procedural requirements set out in the call. If the application does not meet these requirements, it is rejected.
In this call, the following requirements will be verified:
- The application’s focus falls within the call’s purpose and focus.
- The application is complete and contains all required information.
- The requirements for the project manager, project participants, and participating parties under “Requirements for you and your organisation” are met.
- The requirements for requested amounts and project duration under “Grant amount and project duration” are met.
- The application has been approved by the administrating organisation.
- The administrating organisation has signed the application in Prisma within seven calendar days after the close of the call.
All applications are assessed by an external review panel based on the contents of the application. As such, it is important to write the application as clearly as possible and include all important and relevant information. The review panel consists of active researchers and users of research results who together have national and international perspectives and experience. Each application is assessed by four reviewers.
In this call, Formas will apply a portfolio perspective in order to fund projects that address a wide range of challenges and perspectives within the frames of the call. The portfolio perspective will be applied by the review panel and Formas only after each application has been assessed on its own merits.
Applications are assessed based on the following criteria:
Relevance
- The project can significantly contribute to the purpose and focus of the call.
- The project’s expected results can potentially have significant real-world impact in the short or long term.
- The design of the project and the expected results consider the relevant needs and circumstances of different groups in society.
Potential
- The problem formulation and purpose of the project are clear, novel, and in line with the purpose and focus of the call.
- The research that forms the basis of the project is of high scientific quality and is relevant.
- The project is novel and has significant potential to contribute with expertise and scientifically significant results with potential to achieve structural changes within the call’s area.
- The project has significant potential for scalability and/or dissemination with appropriate activities and identified stakeholders who can contribute to it.
Implementation
- Scientific methods and planned activities are realistic and appropriate for achieving expected results during the project.
- The interdisciplinary approach, where one has been chosen, are appropriate in relation to the formulated problem and purpose.
- The time frame and budget are realistic and appropriate in relation to the purpose and objectives of the project.
- The plan for how the results of the project will be utilised is well described, feasible, and appropriate.
- Gender equality, equity, and equal treatment perspectives are well integrated into the implementation of the project.
- Ethical considerations are well described and the plan for how these will be managed is appropriate.
Participants and stakeholders
- The project participants and their collective scientific expertise are well described and appropriate for implementation.
- The project is conducted in collaboration with relevant end users or stakeholders. The participation and activities of these stakeholders is well described, credible, and appropriate for the objectives of the project.
- The project team (key actors) and the distribution of influence are well balanced between women and men. This is relevant for project teams of more than three (3) people.
All four criteria are to be addressed in the application, and the project is to clearly relate the application to these criteria. All four criteria will be weighed equally in the initial assessment. To differentiate applications of comparable quality in the final assessment, the criterion “Potential” will be given more weight than the others.
Our reviewers are not currently allowed to use AI tools to help review applications. There are several reasons for this. There is a great risk that uploaded information may be made public. There are also risks related to confidentiality and the use of personal data. Uploading an application or information to any kind of AI tool is an unauthorised disclosure of information. This does not just apply to AI tools but also to many other services and tools for storage and sharing data.
Decisions on awarded projects are expected to be made on 27 May 2025. We publish our decisions the following day at the latest on the Formas website, and you will receive an email when you can view the decision in Prisma. Grant award decisions cannot be appealed.
All awarded projects must submit a report to Formas containing financial and project results within three months of the end of the grant availability period. A financial status report is also to be submitted to Formas annually, and a short scientific interim report is to be submitted to Formas at the project’s midpoint. All reports are submitted in Prisma.
How to report expenses and results
In this call, awarded projects are to submit a policy brief or equivalent together with the financial or scientific final report. This brief is to summarise the project’s conclusions and lessons and provide recommendations for how to develop spatial planning in Sweden to achieve the required transformational structural shifts to become climate neutral, circular, and resource efficient. A template for this is sent in connection with the decision.
Formas may impose additional content and results requirements for reporting projects to facilitate dissemination and real-world impact. In such cases, the award decision will include more information about this. Projects awarded in this call are to contribute to and participate in the activities organised by the call coordinator. Formas may also require you to participate in conferences and similar events to create synergies and platforms for learning and knowledge sharing.
Results from research funded by Formas are to be published using open access.
You are also to have a data management plan for the data produced in the project. If you receive Formas funding, you are to draw up a data management plan. The plan should not be sent into us, but you should be able to present the plan upon request. By signing our grant terms and conditions, you certify that a data management plan will be in place before the research begins and that it will be maintained.
Formas transfers information about awarded grants to SweCRIS, a national database of grant-funded research that was instituted by request of the government.
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