Urgent grants 2020 to secure access to data or research materials

To apply for an urgent grant, the main applicant must have obtained a doctoral degree before the call closes.

• Participating researchers must also have obtained their doctoral degree. Other staff involved in the project do not need to have a doctoral degree.
• The proposed grant recipient must be stated as a project manager on the application.
• Grants for research projects may only be administered by a Swedish university, college or other Swedish public organisation that meets Formas’ criteria for administrating organisations.
  Who can become an administrating organisation?
• There is no upper age limit for the main applicant and participating researchers. However, researchers who are full-time pensioners are not eligible to receive funding towards salaries.

In the urgent call, grants are awarded only to cover costs for ensuring the availability of data or research materials for future use in research, such as:

• Costs for carrying out the collection of data or research materials: researcher salaries, PhD students or technical staff, relevant operating expenses like consumables and travel, and other costs.
• Costs for the processing and analysis of the data or research materials needed to ensure their future use.

The costs of participation in conferences and publication in journals are not covered by the grant.

When you apply for an urgent grant, you can apply for funds to cover both direct and indirect costs. Direct costs include costs for salaries, equipment and travel. Indirect costs are costs that are shared with others in your organisation, such as for administration, IT and renting of premises. Indirect costs are sometimes called overhead.

• The amount of the grant must correspond to the costs of urgently securing the data or research materials for future research. The urgent need to ensure the availability of data and research materials must be based on a circumstance or situation that requires prompt attention or has not been foreseen and that will not likely be repeated.
• The grant is awarded for a maximum of one year.
• Formas does not grant funding for annual salary increases.

We recommend that you write your application in English, since the reviewers that will assess your application is international. If you write your application in Swedish it will be translated into English prior to assessment. This may cause the review process for your application to take longer.

Applications submitted to Formas become publicly available documents after a decision is announced. However, Formas does not disclose information about an individual’s business relationships or operating conditions, inventions or research results if the disclosure would be assumed to cause the individual suffering. If applications are requested, Formas conducts a confidentiality assessment.

You apply for a grant in our application system, Prisma External link.. In Prisma, you must create a personal account where you will add the information you need for your application.

You should write your application in English, as the reviewers that will assess your application is international. However, the popular science description must be written in Swedish, and the abstract should be in both Swedish and English.

All limits for the maximum number of characters refer to characters including spaces. We recommend that you choose the Arial font in font size 12 for the information you enter in all text boxes.

Your application must include a clear description of the project under the following sections:

Basic information

• Specify the number of months your application covers (the project can be a maximum of 12 months). For example, projects expected to start in May 2020 can have a project length until the end of April 2021.
• Project title in Swedish and English.
• Popular science description in Swedish and English.
• Abstract in Swedish and English.

Both the popular science description and the abstract should clearly address the urgent need for the application, objectives and relevance as well as method.

Research programme

Objectives and purpose of the urgent grant application:

• The urgent need. You must describe and justify the urgent need to ensure the data or research materials. What is the objective and purpose of ensuring the data or research materials? Also explain the possible consequences of not obtaining an urgent grant.Forte’s areas of responsibility. You must explain how the project belongs to one or more of Forte’s areas of responsibility – health, working life and welfare and how your project is linked to the corona pandemic and covid-19.You must explain the scientific relevance and importance. Your research questions and references should be clearly stated.
  
• Formas’ areas of responsibility. You must explain how the project belongs to one or more of Formas’ areas of responsibility – environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning.

Project description

• Describe how the research will be carried out (work package) and the timetable. You must explain the method for collecting the data or research materials.

Societal relevance

• Explain the potential societal value of your research topic.

Budget

You report the project budget in Prisma. Note that you should always write the budget and budget specification in English; any Swedish budget specification will not be translated but will instead be assessed as is by the international review panel. In Prisma, write out the total amount you are applying for in kronor using digits. For example, 1 million kronor should be written as: 1 000 000 kronor.

The budget should include:

• Salaries including social security contributions. For any current employment positions, the salary in effect at the time of the application (including social contributions) must be used for all subsequent years. For new employment positions, the starting salary at the administrating organisation must be used for all subsequent years. Note that Formas does not grant funding for annual salary increases.
• Specify the level of activity for all project participants, including participants that provide in-kind services for their time or have other funding sources for completing the project.
• Specify the operating costs and premises costs (if not part of overhead) in accordance with practices at the administrating organisation.
• Specify equipment depreciation costs if relevant to the application.
• Specify the indirect costs in the project budget in accordance with the practices at the administrating organisation. Indirect costs relate to overhead costs. Formas does not allow overhead for equipment depreciation costs or costs of premises.
• Budget specification. Provide a brief justification for all salaries and other expenses. Also state the total project budget, including funding from other sources. The budget specification is part of the application assessment.
• The “Other funds” field indicates whether the project receives funding from a source other than Formas or Forte that is relevant for completing the project.
  

Ethical considerations

Fill in only if relevant for completing the project. You must describe the relevant ethical issues and how they should be managed. Examples include research that uses personal data, or experiments on humans or animals.

Reporting ethical considerations

Classifications

Formas uses project classifications in analyses and supporting documentation on an overall level. The classifications are made when the applicant states the subject area, SCB codes and at least one sustainable development goal the project can contribute to.

• Subject area
  Select the project’s subject area and add a sub-heading.

• SCB code
  Select at least one SCB code with two sub-levels that together form the entire code.

• Keywords
  Select at least one and a maximum of three keywords describing the project. Choose what best represents your project, even if it does not entirely match the field you work in.

• Sustainable development goals
  Select a minimum of one and a maximum of three sustainable development goals (SDGs) that best fit your project. When selecting more than one goal, specify the goals in priority order. The goal that is most relevant to the project should be stated in the first box. As the meaning of the goals is sometimes narrower than what the title indicates, we encourage you to follow the link and read in more detail about the goals you intend to specify to ensure that the intended research contributes towards achieving that particular goal.
  More information about the meaning of the goals External link.

Administrating organisation – the organisation receiving the grant

An administrating organisation is the organisation that receives the grant money from Formas when a grant is awarded. Applicants under this call must be administrating organisations that are approved by Formas.

Who can become an administrating organisation?

• Select your administrating organisation in Prisma and add the department or unit where the project is based. Read more about Formas’ criteria for administrating organisations External link..
• Prisma contains a default list of approved administrating organisations. Contact your organisation if it is missing from the list. In that case, your organisation will need to create an organisation account in Prisma.
• A registered application is automatically sent to the administrating organisation after the call is closed. The administrating organisation then has seven business days to digitally sign the application.

Review panels

For an urgent grant application, you do not need to select a review panel. For more information, please read the section “How does the assessment process work for an urgent grant application?”

Participants

• The main applicant invites participating researchers.
• A participating researcher is a researcher with a doctoral degree and is considered a co-applicant for the project.
• You can also have participating administrators who are not involved in the project but who help you fill in the application form.
• Each participant must have created a user account in Prisma.
• The main applicant invites people to participate in the application process by searching for their given name, surname and email address in Prisma (note that exact spelling of names and email addresses is required).
• Note that invited participating researchers must transfer their CVs and publications in the application so that the principal applicant can register the application when it is completed. See the next section, “CVs”.

CVs

• The main applicant retrieves the information from his or her personal account in Prisma.
• Participating researchers add their CV details from their profile to the application in Prisma themselves.
• Applicants should review in good time that their CV in Prisma is complete and up-to-date.
• If participating researchers have not filled in the required fields correctly, the main applicant will not be able to complete registration of the application.
• Participants who are not co-applicants are not able to attach CV information. Instead, their qualifications for the project should be described in the research programme.

The following CV information should be added to the application.

Education. Postgraduate (doctoral), undergraduate and graduate level.

Professional experience. Current employment and major relevant prior positions, postdoctoral stays, postgraduate exchanges that are relevant for the research, and any significant gaps in the research (such as parental leave, illness, military service or political duties).

Qualifications and merits:

• Lectureships
• Number of advisor engagements: Doctoral students, postdocs, graduate theses; specify the total number for each category and name the most relevant ones (max. 10).
• Grants received in competition: Specify the most relevant ones (max. 10).
• Awards and distinctions: Specify the most relevant ones (max. 10).
• Other qualifications, including bibliometric indicators: Here, the main applicant and participating researchers should give a brief summary of their bibliometric profile, for the past five-year period and in total if the applicant´s active research time is longer than five years (max 800 characters including spaces).
  This summary should include the following:
  • The number of publications of various types, such as articles in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, books and other monographs, conference papers and popular science contributions.
  • Any other publication or citation specifications relevant to your research field.
    
    Under “Other qualifications,” you can list other qualifications that are relevant to the application, such as any popular science publications or proven experience of collaboration and research communication (max. 10).

• Intellectual property: For example, patents and open source software that you have developed (max. 10).

List of publications

The main applicant and participating researchers should list up to ten of their most relevant publications. The publications should be linked from the applicants’ personal profiles in Prisma.

Appendices

Appendix for illustrations. If you need figures, tables or images to describe the project, you can upload them as attachments here. A maximum of one PDF attachment of 4 MB can be uploaded. Please note that a CV should not be attached as an appendix.

In a first step, Formas will assess your application to determine its urgency. If necessary, your application will then be assessed by external reviewers. The entire review process takes about two months (provided that the application is written in English).

Your application is assessed based on its contents. It is therefore important to write the application as clearly as possible and include all important and relevant information.

The applications are assessed based on the following criteria:

• The project must meet an urgent need to ensure the future availability of data or research materials.
• The project must belong to one or more of Formas’ areas of responsibility: environment, agricultural sciences and spatial planning or in the area of Forte’s responsibility, health, working life and welfare.
• The project must meet Formas’ and Forte’s requirements for scientific quality and societal relevance.
  

Criteria for scientific quality: Research question with regard to the urgent need. Method and implementation for ensuring the data or research materials. Scientific competence of project manager and participants.

Criteria for societal relevance: Potential societal benefit and real-world impact of the research topic. Communication with stakeholders and end users is not assessed, as it is not relevant for the implementation of an urgent project.

Applications that do not fall within Formas’ or Forte’s areas of responsibility will be rejected without further assessment. Applications that do not adequately describe or justify the urgent need to ensure future availability of the data or research materials will be rejected.

Decisions on urgent grants are made on an ongoing basis. These decisions cannot be appealed.

Each granted project must submit a report to Formas containing a financial and a popular scientific summary in accordance with the decision. For urgent grants, this is done within one month of the end of the appropriation period.

How to report expenses and results External link.

Results from research funded by Formas must be published using open access.

Open access to research results and data External link.

If you receive funding from us, you must have a data management plan for the data produced in the project. This plan does not need to be submitted to Formas, but should be presented on request. We recommend that you follow the guidelines developed by Science Europe on what a data management plan should contain. For more information about the guidelines, see the Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management External link..

SweCRIS

Formas shares information about awarded grants to SweCRIS, a national database of grant-funded research that was instituted by request of the government.