Funding for mobility seminar with China (NSFC) 2022

The Academy of Finland’s mobility funding is based on bilateral agreements and supports the Academy’s 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.

Funding can be applied for to cover costs in connection with participation in a seminar abroad (travel and living expenses of the research team) or with the basic facilities of a seminar organised in Finland (rents, meeting equipment, food and drinks in meeting, printing, mailing).

The call for applications for funding for mobility seminars applies to China (NSFC).

The applicant is a researcher who is based in Finland and has close connections to Finland. The applicant must have at least a higher academic degree, but preference is given to researchers with a doctoral degree. The application cannot be submitted as a consortium application.

Special terms and restrictions

If the applicant has ongoing Academy funding 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. Read more about drafting the report. If you have not submitted a final report on a completed, Academy-funded project by the set deadline, we may decide not to process your application.

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.

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 earliest start date for the funding period is 1 March 2023. The funding period (the period during which the funding may be used) is usually two years. The maximum seminar duration is one week.

The funding to be distributed through this call depends on the Finnish Parliament’s decision to allocate the necessary funds to the Academy in the 2023 state budget.

Funding can be applied for to participate in a seminar abroad (travel and living expenses of the research team) or for the basic facilities of a seminar organised in Finland (rents, meeting equipment, food and drinks in meeting, printing, mailing).

The mobility funding is granted in the form of an appropriation, which is paid via a Finnish site of research (usually a university or research institute. The funding does not cover insurances, so the applicant and the other researchers supported by the mobility funding must take out appropriate insurance and prepare for tax consequences.

The funding to be applied for must be itemised and specified in section 1.4 of the research plan. It is recommended that the funding amount be determined in line with standard practice at the site of research. Short-term visits (up to two weeks) may also be carried out following the state travel regulations. The full cost model does not apply to the Academy’s mobility funding.

What is required from the site of research?

When the applicant’s Finnish 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).

Funding plan

In the application, provide a cost estimate including an estimate of the annual amount of funding needed, itemised by type of expenditure (travel expenses, other costs).

All funding to be applied for is justified in the research plan under item 1.4.

How to submit and supplement the application

The deadline is non-negotiable. The deadline for applications is 28 September 2022 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. 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 Academy-funded project 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, abstract and progress report, 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 Academy of Finland is committed to following regulations on data protection. The GDPR-compliant privacy statement concerning the research funding process is available on the Academy website under Data protection.

The seminar funding concerning China is based on the Academy of Finland’s bilateral agreement with the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). With seminar funding, the Academy works to support Finnish researchers’ collaborative initiatives with Chinese researchers.

Finnish–Chinese seminars

The name of the call is ‘Mobility seminar with China (NSFC)’. The head or responsible person of the Finnish research team submits one application either for funding to attend a seminar in China or for funding to organise a seminar in Finland. The funding is granted in the form of an appropriation.

In the Academy’s online services under ‘Project title’, clearly indicate that it is a Finnish-Chinese joint seminar. Please note that the seminar must have both a Finnish and a Chinese person responsible for the seminar, and both must submit an application to their own funding agency. The application may be submitted to either the mobility seminar call or the mobility cooperation call, not to both. The NSFC may have different deadlines than the Academy. The Academy and the NSFC jointly agree to finance joint seminars in Finland and/or China. The decisions will be made in January–February 2023.

Seminar to be organised in China. The head or responsible person of the Finnish research team submits one application for funding for all participants in the same organisation, unless they have another source of funding for the seminar. If researchers from several Finnish organisations will participate in the seminar, a separate application shall be submitted for each of them. All applications relating to the same seminar must be easily identifiable and linked when the Academy processes the applications. This means that the applications must use the same name for the seminar. The funding is intended to cover travel and living expenses in China. The funding is not intended for possible participation fees of the seminar.

Seminar to be organised in Finland: The head or responsible person of the Finnish research team applies for funding for reasonable costs of organising a seminar in Finland. As a rule, the funding has covered basic seminar costs (e.g. rents, meeting equipment, food and drinks in meeting, printing and mailing). The funding cannot be used to cover travel expenses of foreign researchers.

Funding reserved: up to 25,000 euros per seminar.

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 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.
• 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.

Mobility

• International mobility for which funding is applied
• Read more about the Academy’s aims concerning mobility.

Collaborators

• Project’s foreign collaborator (foreign person responsible for the joint seminar, their name, organisation and country)
• Describe the collaborator’s project-relevant key merits and provide justifications for choosing the collaborator in section 2.1 of the research plan.

Affiliations

• Research infrastructures: Indicate what kinds of equipment, resources or data reserves provided by national or international research infrastructures the project will 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.
• Centres of Excellence in Research: Read more about Centres of Excellence.
• Finnish Flagships: 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)
• If necessary, the research ethics description is entered under section 1.1 of the research plan.
• See the ethical guidelines.

Funding for the project

• Enter the funding period. The funding period is usually a two-year period when the funding is available. Please note that the planned seminar dates are entered in section 1.3 of the research plan.
• Enter the travel expenses for which funding is applied.
• Enter other costs for which funding is applied.
• 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.
• The cost estimate must be realistic.

• The commitment of the site of research is a requirement for the granting of funding. Make sure that the Finnish site of research (usually a university or research institute) is committed to supporting the project. Read more in the guidelines on the commitment by the site of research.

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. The project description is also stored at 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 Academy funding 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 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:

• Research plan, maximum length six pages. See the guidelines on the structure of the research plan.
• Complete list of publications by the applicant. Read the guidelines on the structure of the list of publications.
• CV and list of publications for foreign PI. These may be drafted following the instructions of the foreign funder.
• CVs for the Finnish researchers for whom Academy mobility funding is applied. The CVs can be combined into the same file with the foreign PI’s CV. The applicant’s own CV is filled in on the tab ‘CV’.

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 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 Academy’s contact persons listed in the call text.

The review of mobility applications will focus on the following aspects, for example:

• How does the applicant justify why and for what purposes the funding is applied for?
• How does the application address the objective of the funding as regards promoting the international interaction of Finnish researchers and increasing the internationalisation of Finnish research environments?
• What is the quality, impact and renewal potential of the research cooperation described in the application?

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
• scientific merits of the research groups
• how the teams complement each other
• added value of research cooperation
• increasing international collaboration
• participation of early-career researchers.

The NSFC will also review the joint seminar applications.

See the Academy’s rating scale and the review questions that will be used in the review: review form. The Academy’s review forms are only available in English.

The Academy’s research councils will make the funding decisions in early 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. There you can also read the review report on your application.

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.

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.

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

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

Questions and feedback