Flagship Programme call 4, 2023

The aim of the Academy of Finland’s Flagship Programme is to pool together expertise from different fields in Finland to form high-level research and impact clusters that will further contribute to increasing the quality and impact of Finnish research. A Flagship is an effective mix of cutting-edge research, impact in support of economic growth and/or society, close connections to the business sector and society at large, adaptability, and a strong commitment from host organisations to meeting the set targets.

Flagships are high-quality, high-impact competence clusters that work in flexible ways, simultaneously running several research projects and other activities. During the flagship term, the clusters will make ongoing progress and systematically improve and expand their activities.

The funding can be applied for by Finnish higher education institutions and government research institutes. Joint applications as a consortium are accepted. If you are applying as a consortium, see the guidelines for consortium applications on our website.

The applicant is an organisation. The organisation selects a person who will be responsible for the application in its entirety and who will submit the application. This person may be the director of the Flagship or some other person approved by the organisation.

The commitment by the site of research is issued by senior management of the research organisation. The commitment is issued via the online services.

Special terms and restrictions

In the present call, funding will not be granted to directors or vice directors for Centres of Excellence of the 2018–2025 and 2022–2028 CoE Programmes or for currently ongoing Flagships. It is also important to note that in making the funding decisions, the decision-making subcommittee will consider the diversity of the Flagship Programme and whether the candidate Flagship is a good fit for the existing Flagship Programme landscape.

Members of the Academy Board, research councils and the Strategic Research Council will not be granted Academy 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.

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

The funding is granted for the period 1 January 2024–30 April 2028 (starts retroactively) and, after an interim evaluation, for the period 1 January 2028–31 December 2031. The overall funding period is 1 January 2024–31 December 2031. For technical reasons, the funding will be distributed in four separate, fixed-term funding decisions.

The funding periods are:

• 1 January 2024–30 April 2026 and 1 January 2026–31 April 2028
• 1 January 2028–30 April 2030 and 1 January 2030–31 December 2031.

The funding reserved for the selected Flagships comes to 20 million euros in 2024, 2026, 2028 and 2030; the total funding amounts to up to 80 million euros.

The funding to be distributed through this call depends on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to the Academy of Finland in its budget for 2024–2030.

The funding is granted to be used for the actions described in the research and impact plan.

Host organisations must be prepared to make a significant, steadily increasing investment in establishing and supporting the Flagships. Allocating funding not to individual research teams but to organisations that have made a strong commitment to the Flagship Programme is a way to support the long-term development of competence clusters and their high-quality research and broad impact.

The resources planned for the Flagship and their development during the flagship term are described in a separate table to be appended to the application (see ‘Application parts and guidelines’ for more details).

Academy funding cannot be used for economic activity. Read more about the eligibility of economic operators.

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.

Funding plan

The call is implemented following the full cost model. The Academy of Finland’s funding contribution comes to 100%, covering the costs in full. The host organisations will not be required to contribute to the Academy’s funding.

What is required from the site of research?

We require that the site of research (e.g. university) 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 Academy 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 Academy’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).

The non-negotiable call deadline also applies to consortia. The deadline for applications is 16 May 2023 at 16.15 Finnish time.

The person responsible for the application will submit it using the Academy of Finland’s online services. A commitment by the site of research is requested via the online services, and the commitment will need to be issued by senior management of the research organisation.

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 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.

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. 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 at the Academy 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.

An application will not be processed if the application does not meet the key requirements, or if the application otherwise does not qualify for processing. A 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 (action plan, etc.), plan of intent, abstract and interim 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 Academy 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.

Applicants are requested notify the preliminary topic, fields and keywords of the application by email to flagship@aka.fi by 14 April 2023. The notification is non-binding. Only one notification per Flagship is requested. The information will be used in organising the expert review.

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 on our website.

The online application contains the following parts

Personal data

• Personal details of the applicant/the organisation’s responsible person

Consortium parties

• 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
• 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

• The person responsible enters up to ten of the Flagship’s own most important publications and up to ten of other research and/or impact 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)

Affiliations

• Research infrastructures: 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. Read more about research infrastructures.
• Part of a Centres of Excellence in Research: Read more about Centres of Excellence.
• Part of a Finnish Flagship: Read more about the Finnish Flagship Programme.

Research ethics

• Preliminary ethical review for project and/or animal testing permit (yes/no)
• Found guilty of research misconduct (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 (yes/no)
• The research ethics description is entered under section 4 of the research and impact plan.
• See the ethical guidelines.

Funding for the project – 100% full cost model

• Funding period, effective working hours, indirect employee costs, overheads percentage and VAT. Note that funding is applied for to cover the period January 2024–April 2028 (see ‘Funding to be applied for and funding period’ for more details.
• Salaries and other costs. Use only one line for each salary category. For example, salaries for all the professors will be combined together.
• Commitment by site of research. Make sure you have a commitment from your site of research to supporting the project. Read more in the guidelines on the Commitment by site of research. The commitment by the site of research is issued by senior management of the research organisation.

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.

Appendices

• Appendices must be PDF files.

Obligatory appendices

• Research and impact plan
  • Maximum length 20 pages, applies to both non-consortium and consortium applications
  • See the guidelines on the structure of the research and impact plan. You must follow the given structure. Please use the headings provided.
  • See the how-to guides for the online services.
• Resource table
  • The structure is given in the template (4 pages + 1 page per partner).
  • Describe the resources of the candidate Flagship for the first four-year term 2024–2027.
  • The figures are given with an accuracy of 0.1 million euro.
  • In addition to the table, give a short textual explanation of the intended use of the funding.
  • For each of the rows in the table, give a short explanation of the principles used in producing the figures in the table.
  • Also include a short explanation of monitoring the resources allocated, together with a risk assessment related to the expected budget growth.

Case-specific appendices

• Letter of collaboration. Read more about the letter. As the applications are reviewed by international experts, we recommended that you write the letters of collaboration in English. If you have several letters, you can scan them into a single file.

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 Academy’s 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.

Submit application

• You can submit the application when you have filled in or attached all 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.

Academy of Finland funding is granted based on peer review. We mainly use foreign experts as reviewers.

The review of applications will be carried out by a panel of experts. The panel will be supported by reviews requested from external reviewers, who will not participate in the panel. The panel will assess the applications assigned to them and prepare a written review report on each application.

The review reports by the panel and the external reviewers will be forwarded to the host organisation representatives, director and vice director of the Flagship in autumn 2023 for possible commenting. At this stage, they will have the possibility to comment on the reviews in order to address factual, and only factual, inaccuracies. These comments will be considered by the decision-making body. The Academy will provide further details and guidelines on this step in the review process at a later stage.

The applications will be reviewed paying close attention to the Flagship Programme’s objectives concerning internationally top-level research, impact in support of economic growth and/or society, and the role and participation of collaborators. Support provided by the Flagship for the building of internationally competitive competence centres and ecosystems in Finland, together with the principles of responsible science, will also play a role in the review.

Review criteria:

• Demonstrated scientific excellence and impact in support of economic growth and/or society
• Plan for promoting scientific excellence and impact in support of economic growth and/or society
• Ecosystem and organisation of candidate Flagship.

Read the rating scale and the review questions that will be used in the review: review form,  review guidelines for external reviewers and review guidelines for panel. 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. The panel will also rank the applications that have received a rating of 5 or 6.

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

The funding decisions will be made by the Academy’s Flagship Programme Subcommittee based on the aims of the Flagship Programme, the review reports of both the external reviewers and the review panel, the comments received, and the significance and growth potential of the host organisation’s commitment together with the diversity of the Flagship Programme and the candidate Flagship’s fit for the existing Flagship Programme landscape.

The funding decisions will be made in early January 2024. The Subcommittee reserves the possibility to call Flagship candidate representatives for an interview before funding decisions are made.

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.

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 notification.

If necessary, update the popular project description before you accept the funding. It is important that the public description is written for a general audience. Make changes to the annual instalments, if necessary (see the instructions in the Academy’s funding terms and conditions), and append the full data management plan (in consortium applications only consortium PIs do this). 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.

Resource table template (4 pages + 1 page per partner) to be appended to the application in PDF format.

Please contact us primarily via our helpdesk (Division of Research Environments).

You may also contact us by email at flagship@aka.fi.

• Maiju Gyran, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 015
• Sanna Marjavaara, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 070
• Sirpa Nuotio, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 082
• Jukka Tanskanen, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 071
• Helena Vänskä, Senior Science Adviser, tel. +358 295 335 036