Mobility grant from Finland to Japan (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship) 2023

The Research Council of Finland’s mobility funding is based on bilateral agreements and supports our general science policy objectives. The mobility funding promotes the international interactions of Finnish researchers as well as the internationalisation of Finnish research environments and thereby strengthens the quality of Finnish research.

JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowships apply to Japan. The funding is based on a bilateral agreement between the Research Council of Finland and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).

The funding is intended for the researcher’s own mobility costs (necessary travel and living expenses) for research in Japan.

The applicant is a researcher who is based in Finland and has close connections to Finland. The applicant is required to have obtained a doctoral degree no later than 31 March 2024. No more than six years must have passed since the applicant completed their degree before the start of the visit to Japan.

Special terms and restrictions

The funding comes in the form of a personal grant. The JSPS is responsible for the funding and the funding terms and conditions. The JSPS may provide funding to one person for a period of 12–24 months. In addition, the Research Council of Finland may provide funding for the applicant’s family’s travel expenses if the conditions are met. The funding period for the family’s travel expenses (period during which funding can be used) may exceed 24 months. More information on the grant is available under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’ in the call text.

You must immediately notify us if you receive funding from other sources for the same purpose after your application to us has been submitted.

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

If the applicant has ongoing funding from the Research Council of Finland or completed projects for which a final report has not yet been submitted, they must prepare a progress report. This does not apply to applicants acting as the responsible person in funding schemes where the funding recipient is an organisation or to applicants who are subproject PIs in consortia. Read more about drafting the report. If you have not submitted a final report on a completed project funded by us by the set deadline, we may decide not to process your application.

Members of the Research Council's Board, scientific councils and the Strategic Research Council will not be granted 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.

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.

The name of the call is ‘Mobility grant from Finland to Japan (JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship)’.

The funding comes in the form of a personal grant paid directly to the researcher. The grant is intended for the researcher’s own mobility costs (necessary travel and living expenses). The duration of the visit to Japan is between 12 months and 24 months. The visit must be a single, uninterrupted period. The earliest start date is 1 June 2024, and the latest is 30 November 2024.

Applications are submitted to us so that we can screen out the applicants and select a candidate for the JSPS. The JSPS will make the funding decision and be responsible for grant payment.

The most important part of the application is the JSPS application form, which must be appended to the application in the online services. Use the old JSPS form (PDF) (FY 2023, FORM 2, Standard) and check the JSPS call text (PDF) and instructions (PDF).

If family members accompany the applicant to Japan for at least six (6) months, the researcher may apply for funding for the family’s travel expenses. Funding for family members’ travel expenses is applied for with the same form as the JSPS Fellowship. The travel expenses of family members are added to the ‘Travel expenses’ category on the tab ‘Funding for the project’. The family members are entered and their travel expenses are specified in the PDF appendix to the application: name, age, relation to the applicant and travel funding applied for, e.g. daughter Anna, 5 years of age, €750.

The funding period for the family’s travel expenses (period during which funding can be used) starts at the earliest on 1 April 2024. The travel funding for family members is paid as a grant to the applicant’s personal account in Finland. The funding does not cover insurances for family members, so applicants must take out appropriate insurances.

The funding to be distributed through this call depends on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to the Research Council of Finland in the 2024 state budget.

Funding plan

JSPS pays the grant directly to the Fellow according to its own calculations.

In the application, the applicant presents a cost estimate to the Research Council of Finland:

• If the applicant travels to Japan alone, they enter one (1) euro in the expenditure category ‘Other expenses’. This is a technical formality; the sum is not meant to be withdrawn.
• If the family accompanies the applicant to Japan for at least six (6) months, the applicant enters the travel expenses of the family members under the heading ‘Travel expenses’. The family members are named and their travel expenses are specified in the PDF appendix to the application.

How to submit and supplement the application

The deadline is non-negotiable. The deadline for applications is 20 September 2023 at 16.15 Finnish time.

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 the mobility grant application is submitted to the wrong call or if you have not submitted a report on a completed or ongoing project funded by us according to our instructions, 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 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.

Publicity and data protection

Except for the research plan, plan of intent, abstract and progress report, which are primarily confidential, 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 a form completed in the online services and its PDF appendices. As an applicant, you have the right to submit your application in Finnish or Swedish, but we ask you to submit it in English.

Most of the links below take you to the A–Z index of application guidelines on our website.

The online application contains the following parts

Personal data

• Personal details
• Degrees (most recent one first); parental leaves etc. may be filled in under ‘Additional information’
• Titles of docent and professorships

CV

• Draft the CV following the template (no more than three pages).

General information

• Details on the applicant’s Finnish site of research
• Title of research 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
• Brief overview of scientific and societal objectives, research methods and data as well as expected research results and impact
• Read more about the abstract.

Most relevant publications and other key outputs

• Up to ten of your most important project-relevant publications and up to ten of your most important other outputs, with justifications.
• You can retrieve publication details from the VIRTA publication information service. Also see our how-to guide 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 to carry out the project.

Mobility

• International mobility for which funding is applied
• Read more about our aims concerning mobility.

Collaborators

• Project’s foreign collaborator (name, organisation and country of host or responsible person for visit)

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)
• If necessary, the research ethics description is entered under section 1.2 of the research plan.
• See the ethical guidelines.

Funding for the project

• Enter the funding period.
• Enter the cost estimate as explained under ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’.
• You must immediately notify us if you receive funding from other sources for the same purpose after your application to us has been submitted.
• The cost estimate must be realistic.

Public project description

• Maximum length 1,000 characters including spaces
• Popular and reader-friendly description of the research 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.
• Read the guidelines on the public project description.

Progress report

• If you have ongoing funding from us or completed projects for which no final report has yet been submitted, the projects to be reported are available on a separate tab in the online services. This does not apply to applicants acting as the responsible person in funding schemes where the funding recipient is an organisation or to applicants who are subproject PIs in consortia.
• Maximum length per project is 1,500 characters including spaces.
• Describe the progress and/or key achievements of the project and how the project is related to the funding being applied for.
• Read more about drafting the report.
• Also see the How-to guides for the online services.

Appendices

• Appendices must be PDF files.

Obligatory appendices:

• Complete list of publications by the applicant. Read the guidelines on the structure of the list of publications.
• JSPS form (PDF) (FY FY2023, FORM 2, Standard), filled in
• Invitation letter from Japan (template (PDF))
• Letter of recommendation from dissertation supervisor
• Certificate of doctoral degree
• If your family accompanies you to Taiwan for at least six (6) months and you apply for our funding to cover their travel expenses, name and specify the family members: name, age, relation to the applicant, travel expenses, e.g. daughter Anna, 5 years of age, €750.

Submit application

• You can submit the application when you have filled in or attached all the necessary information.
• A red warning triangle on the tab tells you that some information is missing.
• You can edit and supplement 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 fundamental principles of the review are transparency, integrity, equity, competence and diversity. Read more about responsible researcher evaluation.

In the review of the applications, focus will be placed on the following:

• scientific quality of project
• applicant’s scientific merits
• increasing international collaboration.

Read the rating scale and the review questions that will be used in the review: review form. Our review forms are only available in English.

The Subcommittee for Mobility Funding will decide the Fellowship candidates in early 2024.

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. There you can also read the review report on your application.

How to receive the funding

If you have been selected as the Fellowship candidate, we will contact you personally and ask you to update your application on the new JSPS form (FY2024), which will only be available in English after our call deadline. We will send your application to Japan, where it will take about three months to process.

If necessary, update the popular project description.

For technical reasons, a small funding decision has been made for your application, usually amounting to one (1) euro. The sum is not intended to be withdrawn.

If you have also applied for a travel grant to family members, it will be regarded as having been received when you send a request for payment (PDF) to us.

• Ulla Ellmén, Science Adviser (Japan), tel. +358 295 335 011
• Siru Oksa, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 125

Our email addresses are in the format firstname.lastname(at)aka.fi.

Questions and feedback (helpdesk)