Call for applications for Research Council of Finland's Proof of Concept Funding

The aim of the Research Council of Finland's Proof of Concept Funding is to promote the versatile utilisation of research results resulting from the research projects of Finnish Centres of Excellence and Finnish Flagships and to support their commercialisation and/or societal impact. The funding encourages researchers to, for example, test their research results in practical settings or develop new approaches to address the needs of industry, public administration or the third sector. This will also provide researchers with the opportunity to diversify their collaborative networks and broaden their expertise in the area of business and stakeholder cooperation.

The funding complements Business Finland’s funding schemes that are aimed at supporting cooperation between research organisations and businesses. Compared to the funding opportunities offered by Business Finland, the Research Council of Finland's Proof of Concept Funding is closer to scientific research, and the solutions produced in the funded projects do not have to be ready for commercialisation.

In this pilot call, funding can be applied for by principal investigators (CoE directors and CoE subproject PIs) working with Finnish Centre of Excellence funding (at call deadline) and Finnish Flagship researchers authorised by flagship directors. A director of a Finnish Flagship may authorise up to five applicants to apply for funding from this call. The applicant must have a doctoral degree.

Applicants must describe in their application how the proposed research utilisation project builds on research funded with CoE or flagship funding.

They can apply for funding for either an individual project or a consortium project. A joint application from several applicants forms a consortium application. All subproject PIs in a consortium project must be eligible to apply. Read the guidelines for consortium applications.

Special conditions

The funding is primarily intended towards the salaries of researchers who work full-time on the project and for other project costs. However, the salary costs of an applicant authorised by a flagship director, such as a postdoctoral researcher who heads the project, may under certain limitations be incorporated into the total project costs (see ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’ in this call text).

We will review only one application per applicant. If you do submit more than one application, we will only review the first application submitted. Applications that are not reviewed will not be eligible for funding. You must immediately notify us if you receive funding from other sources for the same purpose after your application to the Academy has been submitted.

If you have not submitted a final report on a completed, Research Council-funded project by the set deadline, we may decide not to process your application.

The PI of the application cannot be changed while the application is being processed (after the call has closed but before the decision). The only exception to this is if the PI dies.

If the application includes cooperation with Russia or Belarus, you must take into account our policies on the matter.

Members of the Research Council of Finland's Board, scientific councils and the Strategic Research Council will not be granted Research Council of Finland funding during their terms.

Funding cannot be granted to a person who has participated in the planning of the call to an extent likely to give them a comparative advantage over other applicants.

We will not process an application if the applicant has been found guilty of research misconduct in the three years preceding the year of the call.

An application will not be processed if the applicant or the application does not meet the competence requirements or other key requirements, or if the application otherwise does not qualify for processing. A research council or another decision-making body may decide not to process and not to fund an application based on science policy objectives or if it is apparent for some other reason that the applicant cannot receive funding with the submitted application. Read more about the circumstances that may cause us not to process or review an application.

Individual projects may be granted a maximum of 300,000 euros. In consortia, the maximum project size is 450,000 euros. The funding period starts on 1 January 2024, and the project duration is two years.

General

The funding is granted to a Finnish site of research (usually a university or research institute) through which the funding is paid.

The PI of the funded project must have a close connection with Finland. However, during the funding period researchers hired to the project can work for periods of varying lengths at a foreign university, for instance.

Funding plan

In the application, provide a cost estimate based on the full cost model, including an estimate of the annual amount of funding needed, itemised by type of expenditure. Also include a funding plan that shows all funding granted for the project as well as funding that will be provided by the site of research if the project is launched. The funding cannot be used to carry out research already funded by the Research Council of Finland.

Before submitting the application, you must agree with the administration at your organisation on the contribution of the site of research to the funding of the project. Only costs that pass through the books of the site of the research must be included in the total costs. You must check with your organisation whether the funding planned as the own funding contribution suits this purpose. The funding applied for from the Research Council must not exceed 70% of the total project costs. The cost estimate must be realistic.

All costs must be justified in the free-text field on the tab ‘Funding for the project’.

The funding is granted under the Research Council of Finland’s general funding conditions supplemented with exceptions and specifications specific to this call:

• project PI’s salary for a maximum of twelve months, excluding the project PIs of CoEs and Finnish Flagships

In this call, applicants can also apply for funding for the following direct costs of promoting research utilisation (provided they do not arise from economic activity):

• impact and interaction activities, such as development of new operational methods for research utilisation
• making research data freely available
• market or patent surveys, other equivalent proof-of-concept activities
• experimentation and pilot projects
• protection of IPRs (not maintenance fees)
• commercialisation preparation (not actual commercialisation or commercialisation activities that will benefit only one company).

According to the Research Council of Finland’s funding terms and conditions, the funding cannot be used for economic activity. Economic activity is defined as all activity where goods or services are offered on an open market regardless of whether profits are pursued or generated.

Only for compelling reasons can government grants be awarded to cover salary costs in cases where the applicant has obstacles related to illegal employment, as referred to in section 7(2) of the Finnish Act on Discretionary Government Transfers.

Mobility aid in research projects

The mobility aid is applied for as research costs related to the implementation of the research plan. The aid is applied for in accordance with the practices of the site of research. In order to obtain further information, you should contact the personnel and financial administration of the site of research.

In the online services, the aid is applied for on the tab ‘Funding for the project’ under ‘Travel expenses’. The mobility aid must be justified. Read more about the mobility aid in the funding terms and conditions.

What is required from the site of research?

We require that the site of research (i.e. the applicant’s host organisation, e.g. a university, research institute or other research organisation) provides the research project with all necessary basic facilities. These are determined based on the nature of the research and are the same as those available to other research staff at the site: office and laboratory premises, equipment (incl. computer equipment), and telecommunications, telephone, mailing, copying and library services. When accepting the funding, the site of research is responsible for ensuring that necessary statements and permits from ethics committees have been obtained before the start of the project.

The costs of ensuring immediate open access to peer-reviewed articles are included in the overheads of the site of research and are thus part of the basic facilities provided by the site. The costs associated with storing and sharing research data are regarded as overheads for the project’s site of research. Only exceptionally and for justified reasons can they be accepted as research costs to be covered by our research funding. The site of research also commits to ensuring that the data management plan can be implemented at the site of research, and that the measures to be taken comply with good data management practice. After a positive funding decision, the site of research will also approve the data management plan of the project. Read more in the guidelines on the commitment by the site of research.

The application must also include the overheads percentage, indirect employee costs and coefficient for effective working hours of the site of research. The site of research will see to that this information is kept up to date in the online services. The information is provided as percentages.

When the site of research is a university or a research institute, as a rule, the funding must be applied for VAT included. Consult the financial administration at the site of research for more information. The Research Council’s funding may also cover VAT costs, but only on certain conditions (see Value added tax and read more in the funding terms and conditions).

How to submit and supplement the application

The non-negotiable call deadline also applies to consortia.

The deadline for applications is 6 September 2023 at 16.15 Finnish time.

The consortium PI submits the joint consortium application. The PI can submit the consortium application only after all subproject PIs have tagged their applications as complete.

Make sure to submit the application in good time before the deadline. The system will only accept applications that contain all obligatory information.

You can edit and supplement the application until the deadline. You can make changes to a submitted application (e.g. change appendices), but you must make them before the deadline. If you notice that your application lacks important information after the deadline, immediately get in touch with the call’s contact person, so that they can reopen the application for you. Make sure to re-submit the application after you have supplemented it. We will consider the supplemented information insofar as it is possible in view of the review and decision-making process.

We may ask you to supplement the application. The request for supplementation will be sent to you by email. If you do not supplement the application by the given deadline, we may decide not to process it. You must make sure that your contact details (email address) are up to date.

How the application becomes pending

According to section 17 of the Finnish Administrative Procedure Act and section 8 of the Act on Electronic Services and Communication in the Public Sector, the sender is responsible for the application arriving by the set deadline. An application becomes pending when the online application and the obligatory appendices have been submitted in the online services. The system will confirm a successful submission by sending an email to the address you have provided.

If you have not submitted a final report on a completed or ongoing project funded by the Research Council of Finland by the set deadline, we may decide not to process your application.

An application will not be processed if the applicant or the application does not meet the competence requirements or other key requirements, or if the application otherwise does not qualify for processing. A scientific council or another decision-making body may decide not to process and not to fund an application based on science policy objectives or if it is apparent for some other reason that the applicant cannot receive funding with the submitted application. Read more about the circumstances that may cause us not to process or review an application.

Publicity and data protection

Except for the interaction and impact plan and the abstract, which are primarily subject to professional secrecy, the application and its appendices are public documents. For example, the CV is a public document and as such must not include any confidential information. This publicity is based on the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities. The Research Council of Finland is committed to following regulations on data protection. The applicant is responsible for the disclosure of the personal data contained in the application and, where appropriate, for requesting the consent of the parties concerned. The GDPR-compliant privacy statement concerning the research funding process is available on our website under Data protection.

The application consists of forms completed in the online services and PDF appendices. As an applicant, you have the right to submit your application in Finnish or Swedish, but we ask that you to submit it in English to facilitate the international review. Most of the links below take you to the A–Z index of application guidelines and our website.

The online application contains the following parts

Personal data

• Personal details
• Degrees (most recent one first)
• Titles of docent and professorships

Consortium parties (if applicable)

• Details on each party (name, email address, organisation and country)
• Read the guidelines for consortium applications.

General information

• Details on the site of research
• Title of project in English and Finnish/Swedish
• Research fields (at least one, no more than five). See the research field classification.
• Keywords in English and Finnish/Swedish

Abstract

• Maximum length 2,500 characters including spaces
• Briefly describe how the project will contribute to the utilisation of the research, including societal objectives, beneficiaries, methods, data, expected results and impact.
• You can use the guidelines on the abstract, where applicable.

Research teams

• Team members and their tasks (only persons who are paid salary from the project)
• Effective working hours for the team members

Most relevant publications and other key outputs

• Up to ten of the applicant’s/applicants’ own publications and or other research outputs, with justifications, that are most relevant in terms of project implementation and research utilisation
• You can retrieve publication details from the VIRTA publication information service. Also see the How-to guides for the online services.
• There are separate fields for selected publications and other research outputs. If the desired output type is not listed, select ‘Other, what?’ and enter the name of the output.
• Details on publications may also be entered manually. Obligatory information: author(s), title, year of publication, name of series/journal, type of publication (the type will not show in the PDF version of the application).
• The information is used to assess the competence of the applicant or consortium to carry out the project.

Public project description

• Maximum length 1,000 characters including spaces
• Write a popular and reader-friendly description of the project in English and Finnish/Swedish.
• We will use the project description in our communications on the funded research project. It is important that the public description is written for a general audience. The project description is also stored at research.fi, a service that makes available information on research conducted in Finland.
• Use the guidelines on the public description where applicable.

Funding for the project

• The project’s funding follows the full cost model. The Research Council’s funding contribution to the research costs comes to no more than 70%.
• Before you can fill in the cost estimate, you must first select the site of research on the tab ‘General information’.
• The site of research maintains the following percentages: effective working hours, indirect employee costs, overheads percentage and VAT. The information is provided as percentages.
• Enter the funding period (1 January 2024–31 December 2025).
• Enter salaries and other costs.
• Enter other funding sources and their funding contributions. You must immediately notify us if you receive funding from other sources for the same purpose after your application to us has been submitted.
• Justify the funding to be applied for. The cost estimate must be realistic.
• Consult the administration at your site of research when filling in budget details. Read more about the funding in the call text under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’.
• The commitment of the site of research is a requirement for the granting of funding. Make sure you have a commitment from your site of research (usually a university or research institute) to supporting the project. Read more on the commitment by the site of research.

Mobility

• Describe planned national and international mobility within the project, itemised by person.
• Read more about mobility.
• We recommend that you append a letter of collaboration to the application. Read more about the letter.
• As applications are reviewed by international experts, we recommended that you write the letters of collaboration in English.

Collaborators

• Specify the collaborators of the project (name, organisation, country, brief description goals/benefits of the collaboration)
• Describe the collaborators’ key project-relevant roles and merits and provide justifications for choosing them in section 2 of the interaction and impact plan.
• We recommend that applicants append a letter of collaboration to the application. Read more about the letter.
• As applications are reviewed by international experts, we recommended that you write the letters of collaboration in English.

Affiliations

• Use of research infrastructure: Indicate what kinds of equipment, resources or data reserves provided by national or international research infrastructures the project plans to use. The menu includes infrastructures included in Finland’s national roadmap and/or ESFRI’s roadmap. Other possible infrastructures are entered in a free-text field. Learn more about research infrastructures.
• Part of a Finnish Centre of Excellence. Select from the options provided if the application is affiliated with an ongoing Centre of Excellence programme funded by the Research Council of Finland. Read more about Centres of Excellence.
• Finnish Flagship. Select from the options provided if the application is affiliated with the Finnish Flagship Programme. Read more about the Finnish Flagship Programme.

Research ethics

• Preliminary ethical review for project and/or animal testing permit (select yes/no)
• Found guilty of research misconduct (select yes/no). We will not process a funding application if the applicant has been found guilty of research misconduct in the three years preceding the year of the call.
• Guilty of illegal employment within the meaning referred to in section 7(2) of the Act on Discretionary Government Transfers (select yes/no)
• The research-ethical issues are described under section 3 of the interaction and impact plan. Please note that you should consider responsible science as a cross-cutting issue when preparing your application.
• See the ethical guidelines.

CV

• Maximum length three pages
• Write the CV on our template and append it to the application on the tab ‘CV’ in the online services.
• CV following the template

Interaction and impact plan

• Maximum length eight pages, nine pages for consortium projects
• Write the interaction and impact plan on our template and append the PDF appendix to the application on the dedicated tab in the online services.
• See the guidelines on the structure of the interaction and impact plan. You must follow the given structure. Please use the headings provided.
• The application cannot be submitted if the system detects an error in the page configuration or the structure.
• See the how-to guides for the online services.

Appendices

Appendices must be PDF files.

Obligatory appendices:

• Complete list of publications. Read the guidelines on the structure of the list of publications.

Case-specific appendices:

• Letter of collaboration. Read more about the letter. As international experts review the applications, we recommended that you write the letters of collaboration in English.
• Authorisation from flagship director to the applicant to apply for funding from this call. A director of a Finnish Flagship may authorise up to five applicants or consortium parties to apply for funding from this call.

Submit application

• You can submit the application when you have filled in or attached all the necessary information.
• The joint consortium application is submitted by the consortium PI. The PI can submit the consortium application only after all subprojects have tagged their applications as complete.
• A red warning triangle on the tab tells you that some information is missing.
• You can supplement and edit the application until the deadline. Resaving will replace the earlier version.
• If you want to supplement the application after the deadline, please get in touch with the contact persons listed in the call text.

Authorisation

• You can authorise another person to supplement or view your application.
• Start by entering the person’s name in the field. If the person has an account in the online services (SARA), they can be selected from the list.
• The person must have an account in the  online services (SARA).
• You cannot authorise more than one person at a time to edit a field in your application, and you cannot edit that same field while the authorisation is active.
• Do not authorise yourself.
• See technical instructions on the authorisation process in the how-to guides for the online services.

The Research Council of Finland's funding is granted based on peer review. The applications will be reviewed by panels of Finnish and international experts. If necessary, individual reviews may be requested to support the work of the panels.

The fundamental principles of the review are transparency, integrity, equity, competence and diversity. Read more about responsible researcher evaluation.

Review criteria

• commercial and/or other societal impact as well as the utilisation potential of the research conducted within the Finnish Flagship/Centre of Excellence on which the project is based
• feasibility, innovativeness and impact of the interaction and impact plan
• quality, breadth and significance of the collaboration structures and networks as well as potential user groups for the utilisation of the research results.

See the rating scale and the review questions that will be used in the review: review guidelines and review form. The review guidelines and forms are only available in English. The panel drafts one review report on each application. The review report is subject to professional secrecy. Applications that receive a final rating below 5 receive a brief panel summary on the application. The panel will also rank the applications that have received a rating of 5 or 6.

The funding decisions are based on the review reports and panel rankings. Additionally, the decisions are prepared considering the Research Council of Finland’s criteria for research funding decisions and other policies that guide the Research Council's activities. Read about how funding decisions are made.

The Subcommittee for Proof of Concept Funding will make the funding decisions on 13 December 2023.

You will receive an email notification after the funding decision has been made. After receiving the email, you can log in to the online services with your user ID to view the decision and its justifications. In the online services, you will also have access to the review report(s), which may include the panel ranking (panels rank the best applications).

How to receive the funding

A positive funding decision is accompanied by the funding terms and conditions. If the funding is subject to conditions that differ from or specify our funding terms and conditions, these are indicated in the specific conditions of the decision notification.

Make sure to check the decision, read the funding terms and conditions and accept the funding in the online services without delay. The funding must be accepted in the online services within seven days of the decision date, unless otherwise stated in the special conditions of the decision notification.

If necessary, update the popular project description before you accept the funding. If a project is granted funding, we will publish a description of the project on our website. It is important that the public description is written for a general audience.

Append the full data management plan to the application (in consortium applications, only the consortium PI appends it).

Once you have accepted the funding, the system will send a notification to the commitment issuer at the site of research. That person must also accept the granted funding. See the how-to guide: Decision notification, review reports and accepting funding.

The funds can be paid only after the applicant and the representative of the site of research have accepted them. The system will then notify the funding to the finance administration of the site of research, whereupon the funds will be ready to use.

• Email address: poc@aka.fi
• Jaana Roos, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 151
• Jan Bäckman, Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 010
• Suvi Kansikas, Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 047
• Anni Kleino, Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 161