Competitive funding to strengthen university research profiles 2024 (PROFI 8)
- applied for by universities, each university with its own application; consortium applications will not be accepted
- total budget 100 million euros, granted for a fixed term to support research-related profiling measures at Finnish universities
The aim of the competitive funding to strengthen university research profiles (PROFI) is to support and speed up the strategic profiling of Finnish universities in order to improve the quality of research.
Based on their own strategies, the universities will set out concrete plans for how they intend to improve the quality and impact of their research. In the plans, the universities describe how they intend to promote strengths, thematic research programmes or emerging research fields, and provide a clear schedule for these measures.
In preparing and making the funding decisions, the Research Council of Finland will consider the relationship between the funding applied for, the planned profiling measures and the university’s research funding as a whole. It will also take into account the university’s interim and final reports on previously funded profiling measures.
At the core of the Research Council of Finland’s activities is to provide funding for excellent scientific research. The research we fund is also expected to have high scientific and societal impact and follow the principles of responsible science.
Before you fill in your application in the online services (SARA), carefully read the call text and the funding terms and conditions.
If the call text and the funding terms and conditions conflict, the terms and conditions should always be considered primary. If the translated English or Swedish version of the call text is in conflict with the Finnish call text, the Finnish version should always be considered primary.
Read the full call text on this page.
Background and objectives
The aim of the competitive funding to strengthen university research profiles (PROFI) is to support and speed up the strategic profiling of Finnish universities in order to improve the quality of research.
The funding is fixed-term and may be granted to support profiling areas chosen by Finnish universities based on their strategy. The funding aims to speed up the development of these areas. In their applications, universities are asked to provide an overall picture of their plans for profiling and distribution of work, both from the university’s perspective and in relation to other universities, if applicable.
Another aim is to contribute to intensifying strategic cooperation between Finnish universities and with universities of applied sciences, research institutes, hospital districts and other relevant actors, and to clarifying the responsibilities between these actors. The regional and thematic competitive clusters formed via such collaboration and distribution of work may also include actors from the private and nonprofit sectors.
Based on their own strategies, the universities will set out concrete plans for how they intend to improve the quality and impact of their research. In the plans, the universities describe how they intend to promote strengths, thematic research programmes or emerging research fields, and provide a clear schedule for these measures.
The applications should also include a description of how the universities intend to distribute work between and collaborate with other Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutes, hospital districts and other relevant actors. The applications must also include cost estimates.
In preparing and making the funding decisions, the Research Council of Finland will consider the relationship between the funding applied for, the planned profiling measures and the university’s research funding as a whole. It will also take into account the university’s interim and final reports on previously funded profiling measures.
Funding can be applied for in one or several profiling areas. The university can choose the desired profiling area freely. The area can continue the previously planned development of a profiling area, be completely new or combine old profiling areas.
Key concepts
Profiling area refers to a research area or a thematic research module that a university intends to develop according to its strategy. It is a carefully chosen part of the research conducted at the university.
Profiling areas can be:
- existing high-quality research areas or thematic research modules
- emerging fields or thematic research modules with potential to reach a high level of research
- new fields or thematic research modules with a great deal of potential.
Profiling measure refers to an action that a university aims to carry out to develop a chosen profiling area. Universities may start several measures to advance the same area within a PROFI call.
Who can apply?
The funding is applied for by universities, each university with its own application. Consortium applications will not be accepted.
The application is started by a responsible person approved by the university. The completed application is submitted by the person via the Research Council of Finland’s online services. 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 responsible person can authorise one or several persons to read or edit an incomplete application in the online services. The authorisation is given on the tab ‘Authorisation’ in the online services. Please note that the authorisation is valid only when the call is open.
Funding to be applied for and funding period
The funding period will start on 1 January 2025 at the earliest and end no later than 31 December 2030. The funding is granted for a fixed term.
The PROFI 8 call has a total budget of 100 million euros, which will be granted for measures supporting the research-related profiling of Finnish universities. The Finnish Parliament has allocated 50 million euros to the call in the 2024 budget. The funding to be distributed through this call depends on Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds in the 2025 state budget.
The call is implemented following the full cost model. The Research Council of Finland’s funding contribution comes to 100 per cent, covering the costs in full. The universities will not be required to contribute to the Research Council’s funding.
Discretionary government grants cannot overlap. The funding of an initiated profiling area or measure may, however, be continued with another PROFI funding decision.
Costs related to research infrastructures will be funded only if the infrastructure concerned is a ‘local infrastructure’ primarily operated by the university itself. The key instrument with which the Research Council of Finland funds national and international research infrastructures is the funding provided by the Finnish Research Infrastructure Committee (FIRI Committee). The Research Council will not grant overlapping funding for research infrastructures.
The funding is granted to support the profiling measures specified in the action plan included in the application. The Research Council will not make advance payments on the funding.
The funding must be used in accordance with the detailed, annually revised funding terms and conditions.
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.
Our funding cannot be used for economic activity. Read more about the eligibility of economic operators.
How applications are submitted and become pending, publicity of applications
Competent representatives of the applicant universities will submit the funding applications using the Research Council of Finland’s online services. In the online services, the representatives will also issue a commitment on behalf of the site of research. The call opens on 15 May and closes on June 2024 at 16.15 Finnish time.
How to submit and supplement the application
Make sure to submit the application in good time before the deadline. The system will only accept applications that contain all obligatory information. The applicant is responsible for ensuring that the content of the application appendices is correct.
You can edit and supplement the application until the deadline. For example, you can change the appendices to the application.
If you notice that your application lacks important information after the deadline, immediately get in touch with us via our helpdesk, so that the application can be reopened for supplementation. We will consider the supplemented information only if it is possible in view of the review and decision-making process.
We may ask you to supplement the application. In that case, you will receive a supplementation request by email. If you do not supplement the application by the given deadline, or if the application is substantially incomplete even after a request for supplementary information, we may declare it inadmissible (i.e. it will not be processed). 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.
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 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 consider or process an application.
Publicity and data protection
After the funding decisions have been made, the application and its appendices become public documents. This publicity is based on the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities.
We are committed to following regulations on data protection. The GDPR-compliant privacy notice concerning the research funding process is available on our website under Data protection.
Application parts and guidelines
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 of the person responsible for the application
Site of research
- Details on the site of research
- Website of site of research
- Keywords in English and Finnish/Swedish
Funding for the project
- Full costing (100%) is applied.
- Enter the funding period, effective working hours, indirect employee costs, overheads percentage and VAT.
- Enter salaries and other costs. Use only one row per each cost; for example, the salaries of all professors will be combined.
- Commitment by site of research. Read more: commitment by site of research.
Action plan
- Write the action plan on our template, which includes the structure and instructions for the plan.
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 supplement the application until the deadline. Resaving will replace the earlier version.
- If the call deadline has expired, supplementation must be requested via our helpdesk.
Authorisation
- You can authorise another person to supplement or view your application.
- 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.
- 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 our online services (SARA). See technical instructions on the authorisation process in the how-to guides for the online services.
How the application is reviewed
Research Council of Finland funding is granted based on peer review. PROFI 8 applications will be reviewed by an international review panel in autumn 2024.
Representatives of university management will be called in to be interviewed by the panel. The review focuses both on a university’s overall action plan and on how significant, concrete and realistic each individual profiling area and measure is. The review report is based on the application and the interview. In addition to the review report, the panel will give an overall rating for the application and a rating for each profiling area. The review panel will also rank the applications.
The fundamental principles of the review are transparency, integrity, equity, competence and diversity.
Review criteria
Funding to strengthen university research profiles is granted based on the following review criteria:
- how the plan is linked to the university’s strategy and strategic development measures
- feasibility, credibility and follow-up of the proposed plan
- international standard of research in the profiling area and plans for reaching or maintaining the international level of research in the profiling areas
- ensuring the creation of new, profiling-based initiatives and seeing to their resources
- the university’s overall commitment to profiling and developing the quality of research
- the significance and national added value of collaboration with other universities, research institutes and society at large (incl. infrastructure collaboration)
- the plan’s significance for promoting diverse societal impact.
The review guidelines and forms and the review principles are only available in English.
Decisions
After the panel has given its review report, we will send them to the universities for potential comments. This stage enables the correction of any factual mistakes or misunderstandings in the review report. The applicants have five working days to correct any mistakes they identify (no more than 2 pages).
In addition to the panel review reports, the General Subcommittee designated by the Research Council of Finland Board also has access to the universities’ comments on the reports when it decides on the funding.
The General Subcommittee will make the funding decisions in late 2024 and early 2025.
In preparing and making the funding decisions, the Research Council of Finland will consider the relationship between the funding applied for, the planned profiling measures and the university’s research funding as a whole. It will also take into account the university’s interim and final reports on previously funded profiling measures.
How to receive the funding
A positive funding decision is accompanied by the funding terms and conditions.
Make sure to check the decision and accept the funding and its terms in the online services without delay. This must be done within eight weeks of the decision date, unless otherwise stated in the special conditions of the decision notice.
The system will then 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 both the person responsible for the application and the representative of the site of research have accepted them as received. The system will then notify the funding to the finance administration of the site of research, whereupon the funds will be ready to use.
Contacts
- Contact us primarily by email: profi@aka.fi
- Get in touch via our helpdesk (Division of Information Management) if you encounter technical issues in the online services.
- Our telephone number (switchboard) is +358 295 335 000.
- Materials presented during PROFI 8 call info session, 6 May 2024 (link available after session)
