Frequently asked questions and answers

The annual open call is divided into two separate calls: the call for Career Grants for Early-career Researchers and a call for research projects.

We are adjusting the annual open call so it can better contribute to addressing the major challenges facing Sweden and the world.

The new call for research projects will open in the autumn of 2024, around September 1. The new call is open for six weeks and closes around October 15, 2024.

The final call text will be published when the call opens. We will publish more information on the new call as the development of the call progresses.

The date for grant decisions for the new call has not yet been finalised, but it is planned for June 2025.

The project start date has not yet been finalised, but it is planned for September 2025.

The call is aimed at researchers with doctoral degrees at Swedish higher education institutions and research institutes. The administrating organisation must be a Swedish higher education institution or research institute.

The main applicant must have a minimum career age of 4 years. Career age is here defined as the time passed from when a person has their doctorate issued to the date when the call closes.

You do not have to be employed at your administrating organisation at the time of application, but you must be employed when the grant period begins and then throughout the grant period and during any additional availability period.

You can apply for a research project in which you freely formulate a question within Formas’ areas of responsibility: environment, agricultural sciences, and spatial planning. Formas’ areas of responsibilities are not to be regarded as three separate areas. Knowledge needs often touch on complex issues that are at the intersection of or intersect the environment, agricultural sciences, and spatial planning.

In your proposal, you will need to explain how your project falls within Formas’ areas of responsibility. Research projects that, based on the provided explanation, are deemed to be outside these areas cannot be granted funding, and will be rejected before being reviewed. For a project to be regarded as falling within the Formas areas of responsibility, it must clearly relate to the environment, agricultural sciences, and/or spatial planning, or in intersections between these areas. The project goals and research questions are central to this assessment.

In this call, you cannot apply for funds for projects with the primary purpose of developing technical solutions for extraction, transformation, transmission and/or storage of energy, as well as for capture and storage of carbon dioxide, CCS, or capture and utilization of carbon dioxide, CCU. Technical solutions also include components, materials and control and regulation systems for such solutions.

You cannot apply for development projects. Development defined as using research results and scientific knowledge to produce new goods, services, processes, system and methods or improvements of such already existing.

Additional delimitations may be added later.

This is determined by Formas’ instruction (Ordinance 2009:1024). This states that Formas is to promote and support basic research and needs-driven research in the areas of the environment, agricultural sciences, and spatial planning.

You can apply for a maximum of SEK 1.5 million per year, for a maximum of four years (48 months). As a result, the total budget can amount to a maximum of SEK 6 million.

Projects can have a maximum duration of four years (48 months).

No, co-financing is not required in this call.

You can be a main applicant in both calls in 2024, provided you fulfil the eligibility criteria.

If you are the main applicant for a funded project in the 2024 call for Career grant for early-career researchers and have submitted an application as main applicant in the new call for research projects, you need to withdraw one of these applications.

You can only be the main applicant for one application in the new call for research projects. There is no such limitation for co-applicants (participating researchers). If you are the main applicant for more than one registered application, all applications will be rejected. It is not permitted to submit the same application with different main applicants. All registered applications with similar content will be rejected.

You may not be the main applicant in the new call for research projects if you are the project manager for an ongoing project granted in one of Formas open calls, that has a grant period that includes 2025.

Formas open calls include Mobility grant for early-career researchers, the Annual open call (both Research projects and Research projects for early-career researchers), the Career grant for early-career researchers, and the new call for research projects.

A project is considered ongoing during the years when funds are being paid out from Formas. In Formas’ decision you find which calendar years the project funds will be paid out and how long the funds are available. It is permitted to apply for funds in the call if the project's grant period, that is its payment period, has passed but the availability period still runs during 2025.

Applications where the project manager has an ongoing project from one of Formas’ other open calls and a grant period that includes 2025 will be rejected.

You may apply for project funding in the new call for research projects if you are the project manager for or participate in ongoing project grants granted in one of Formas’ other calls.

Formas cannot fund a researcher more than 100 percent of a full-time position.

The restriction does not apply inversely. As the main applicant (project manager) for an ongoing project with funding from Formas’ open calls, you can apply for and be granted funding in other calls by Formas.

However, you may only have one ongoing project grant as the main applicant (project manager) in one of the Formas annual open calls with the grant types Research Projects, Career Grants for Early-career Researchers or Mobility Grants for Early-career Researchers. The new call will also be subject to this restriction.

Yes, the new call will be connected to Weave.

No, you can only be the main applicant in one application in the new call. This applies regardless of whether you are applying for a Weave project or not.

In the Annual open call, the submitted applications were sorted into ten thematic review panels. In the new call, the review panels will be formed inductively, also called bottom-up, based on the submitted applications.

There are several reasons to why we are changing the review panels. One reason is to create better conditions to assess projects addressing issues the intersection of different fields of knowledge and subject matters. Another reason is that the previous review panels did not in a satisfying way represent the full extent of research within Formas’ areas of responsibility. A third reason is to avoid structures that risk steering and restraining research. By forming review panels inductively, these can better adapt to the research front.

Each review panel consists of active researchers and users of research results. Each application is read and reviewed by at least three reviewers.

In each review panel there will be broad competence that covers all of Formas’ areas of responsibility, disciplines, and combinations of disciplines such as multi- and interdisciplinary research.

The applications submitted in Formas open calls often show a striking diversity when it comes to subject matters, study objects, theory, and method. For the review panel to match this diversity, we need to use reviewers that are primarily experts within a field of knowledge rather than experts on a specific study object, theory, or method. You should therefore write your application so that someone with generalist knowledge, skills, and experience within you field of study will understand what you want to do and why.

The assessment criteria are still under development.

Granted that the new call allows for larger and longer projects, the rate of approval can be expected to be significantly lower than in the annual open call. This is despite of the fact that Formas has added extra funds to the call. If the new call receives the same number of applications as the Research project grant in the Annual open call in 2023, the rate of approval will be approximately 8 percent. There are, however, indications that the number of applications will be higher than that, with an even lower rate of approval as a result.

We do not prohibit you from using generative AI when developing or writing your application. Also, you do not have to state whether you have used generative AI.

However, you need to be vigilant. Generative AI can plagiarize both itself and other texts without stating the source. Generative AI can also “hallucinate”, i.e. make up facts that are incorrect and references that don’t exist. AI also tends to reproduce different forms of bias, for example regarding sex and gender.

As applicant, you are responsible for ensuring that all content in the application is correct.