Project grant for research on viruses and virus-caused disease conditions

The following requirements must be fulfilled in order for you to be eligible to apply for the grant. We carry out checks and reject applications that do not fulfil the requirements.

Focus

The Swedish Research Council invites researchers to apply for funds for research in the field of virus and virus-caused infections.

Virus-caused infections are a leading cause of ill health and high mortality around the world, and are a great strain on healthcare and societal finances. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the problems that follow from limited knowledge about fundamental characteristics of a new virus, and the lack of effective antiviral treatments or vaccines against both unknown and known virus-caused infections. Virus-caused infections have great impact also under non-pandemic years, when outbreaks of influenza virus, RS virus, calici virus and measles among others have placed major hospitals under emergency conditions. Virus develop resistance against existing medicines, which is also a problem, for example in the treatment of immuno-suppressed inpatients in hospitals.

The field of virus and virus-caused disease conditions covers human-pathogenic viruses, and includes both pre-clinical and clinical research relating to

• acute, persistent and chronic virus-caused infections
• understanding of these viruses’ disease mechanisms
• causal relationships between virus-caused infections and other diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, asthma and neuro-degenerative diseases
• epidemiology, healthcare research, rehabilitation, mental health, global health and health economics.

Questions within the field can relate to fundamental pre-clinical and clinical research, and can also include research relating to areas such as disease mechanisms, modelling systems, transmission, viral tropism, the development of virucides, vaccines and anti-viral agents, antiviral resistance, viral immune response, gene and cancer therapy with virus vectors, diagnostics and mapping of viruses in the natural world.

Applicant

The applicant for a research project grant must be an individual researcher. You shall be the project leader and have scientific responsibility for the project. The time you set aside for the project (your activity level, that is the percentage of a full-time equivalent) must be suited to the task and its implementation throughout the grant period.

You must hold a Swedish doctoral degree or an equivalent foreign degree, awarded no later than the deadline for this call. The degree award date we use is the date you fulfilled all the requirements for a doctoral degree, such as mandatory courses, oral defence and an approved doctoral thesis. For applicants with Swedish doctoral degrees, the award date listed in Ladok applies.

Grants from the Swedish Research Council shall be administered by a Swedish HEI or another Swedish organisation that fulfils our criteria for administrating organisations. Opens in new window. Your organisation must therefore be approved as an administrating organisation for you to apply. The administrating organisation must sign your application in Prisma no later than 7 calendar days after the deadline for this call.

If you are awarded a grant, you must be employed by the administrating organisation at the start of and throughout the grant period and any additional availability period, unless the Swedish Research Council approves an exception from this requirement. The employment must equal at least 20 per cent of a full-time equivalent. You do not have to be employed by the administrating organisation at the time of applying.

Number of applications and previous grants

The requirements described in this section only apply to applicants and project leaders.

General information about overlap between applications and grants

Your application must not cover costs for purposes that are already funded by the Swedish Research Council or any other funding body. Overlaps with other grants or applications may impact on the grant amount you are awarded, or be a reason for us to reject your application.

What grants may I apply for simultaneously from the Swedish Research Council?

You may only submit one application for this grant under this call. The table below shows information and restrictions on the grants you may apply for during the same year. Please note that you can only apply for other project grants for other project concepts.

Grants you may apply for simultaneously Opens in new window.

What requirements apply if I already have a grant from the Swedish Research Council?

There are certain restrictions if you are the project leader of an ongoing grant, that is to say where the grant period (payment period from the Swedish Research Council) overlaps the grant period of the grant the application relates to. Please note that the availability period, that is to say the time during which you have the right to use your grant, is normally longer than the grant period. You can find information about the requirements for your ongoing grant in the “Approval of terms and conditions” you received from the Swedish Research Council.

The table below shows information and restrictions on the grants you may apply for if you already have an ongoing grant. Please note that if you are the project leader for an ongoing project grant, this must relate to a different project concept for you to be able to apply. If you are the project leader for an ongoing research environment grant, you may submit an application under this call, provided that the project grant application is not part of the research environment grant. If you are the project leader for an ongoing starting grant or consolidator grant focused on virus and virus-caused diseases awarded under the 2020 call, you may not apply under this call.

Grants you may apply for if you have an ongoing grant Opens in new window.

Note: If you have been the project leader for previous grants from the Swedish Research Council that have ended, final financial reports for all of these must have been submitted within the permitted time frame in order for you to apply for a new grant. Please contact your administrating organisation if you are unsure whether all your final reports have been submitted.

What applies for applications to or grants from other funding bodies?

If your application to the Swedish Research Council relates to the same project concept as a grant you have already been awarded by, or are applying for to another funding body, please describe this.

Participating researchers

You may include up to 6 participating researchers in your application. Participating researchers are other researchers with a doctoral degree or equivalent competence, whose scientific competence will be crucial for the implementation of the planned research. They do not have to be employed by a Swedish HEI.

Participating researchers shall provide the necessary information themselves in Prisma, and upload these to the application. Any further collaborating partners and their roles shall be described in the research plan (please see instructions under “Research plan” below).

Costs and grant amounts

You can apply for a grant for all types of project-related costs, such as:

• salaries (including your own salary), however no more than corresponding to the person’s activity level in the project
• premises
• running costs (such as consumables, travel including stays at research facilities, publication costs and minor equipment)
• depreciation costs.

Grants must not be used for scholarships. If a doctoral student participates, project funds may not be paid out as salary during teaching or other departmental duties.

The minimum amount you may apply for is 400 000 SEK per year, including indirect costs. The maximum amount you may apply for is 2 500 000 SEK per year.

Grant period

You may apply for a grant for a minimum of 1 year and a maximum of 3 years, starting in January 2022. The first payment will be made in January 2022 at the earliest.

Please refer to the application form in Prisma in parallel with reading the instructions below, which describe the call-specific content of the application. More information on what to do in practical terms is available in our Guide for applicants. Opens in new window.

Language

Foreign experts are involved in the scientific assessment of the applications. To ensure fair and equitable assessment and efficient processing, please therefore complete your application in English.

Sections of the application

The application form includes the following tabs:

• Descriptive information
• Research description
• Budget and research resources
• Publications
• Administrating organisation
• Participants
• CV

The information we request under each tab is described below.

Descriptive information

Abstract

In the abstract, please describe in brief the following:

• What is to be done: purpose and aims
• How the research will be carried out: project organisation, time plan and scientific methods
• What is important about the planned research
  

The abstract shall provide a summary picture of the purpose and implementation of the research. Please use wording to ensure persons with another subject specialisation can understand the information.

The description may cover a maximum of 1 500 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one third of an A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Popular science description

Describe the project in such a way that a person who is not familiar with the subject can understand it. Describe what is to be done, and why. Explain also in what way the new knowledge may be important.

The popular science description is an important tool when we inform about the research funded by the Swedish Research Council. If we grant your application, we reserve the right to use the description for information purposes.

The description may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Note: The popular science description must be written in Swedish, unlike the rest of the application.

Research description

Ethical considerations

Describe the ethical issues raised by your project or corresponding. You must also describe how you plan to address ethical dilemmas that may arise. Please justify why the research should be carried out against the background of the ethical issues you have identified. How do your research questions and expected results measure up in relation to the ethical issues? Please also state whether the research involves any handling of personal data, or experiments on animals or human subjects. If no ethical issues are raised, please justify this.

The justification may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Sex and gender perspectives

Please state whether sex and gender perspectives are applicable in your planned research, and justify your decision. Please note that we are not asking for information about the composition of the research team (men/women). Read more about sex and gender perspectives in research content. Opens in new window.

The following applies:

• If you answer “Yes”: Please justify your answer, and describe also how your take account of sex and gender perspectives in the research plan. If you have stated that sex and gender perspectives are applicable, but still choose not to include them in your research plan, you will need to justify this here.
• If you answer “No”, and thereby do not consider that sex and gender perspectives are applicable for your planned research, you do not need to justify your decision.

The justification may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Research plan

The research plan shall be forward-looking and consist of a brief but complete description of the research task. It shall cover a maximum of 10 page-numbered A4 pages in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing and 2.5 cm margins, including references and any images.

The research plan must include the following headings and information, listed in the following order:

• Purpose and aims: State the overall purpose and specific aims of the research project.
• State-of-the-art: Summarise briefly the current research frontier within the field or area covered by the project. State key references.
• Significance and scientific novelty: Describe briefly how the project relates to previous research within the area, and the impact the project may have in the short and long term. Describe also how the project moves forward or innovates the current research frontier.
• Preliminary and previous results: Describe briefly your own previous research and pilot studies within the research area that make it probable that the project will be feasible. If no preliminary results exist, please state this. State also whether the project contributes further to research and scientific results from a grant awarded previously by the Swedish Research Council.
• Project description: Describe the project design under the following headings:
  • Theory and method: Describe the underlying theory and the methods to be applied in order to reach the project goal.
  • Time plan and implementation: Describe summarily the time plan for the project during the grant period, and how the project will be implemented.
  • Project organisation: Clarify how you and any participating researchers will contribute to the implementation of the project. Explain in particular how the time allocated by you (that is, your activity level) as project leader is suitable for the task, including the relationship with your other research undertakings. Describe and explain the competences and roles of the participating researchers in the project, and also any other researchers or equivalent who are important for the implementation of the project.

Provide the following information also. If a heading is not relevant to your application, please state this under the heading.

• Data analysis and statistics: Modern methods often generate complex data. Describe how you plan to analyse data collected in the project, and the statistical methods you will be using. If the project covers clinical studies, please include a power analysis.
• Equipment: Describe the basic equipment you and your team have at your disposal for the project.
• Need for research infrastructure: Specify the project’s need for international and national research infrastructure. In the first instance, you should use the research infrastructures supported by the Swedish Research Council, Opens in new window. which are open to all. If you choose to use other infrastructure instead, please justify this need (also applies for local research infrastructure).
• International and national collaboration: Describe your own and the team’s collaboration with foreign and Swedish researchers and research teams. State whether you contribute to or refer to international collaboration in your research.
• Other applications or grants: If you are applying for or intend to apply for other grants from the Swedish Research Council, please clarify the relationship between the projects. This applies also if you are receiving ongoing grants from the Swedish Research Council with grant periods that wholly or partly overlap with the grant you are now applying for. You should also justify why you are submitting one or several further applications. Describe also the relationship with other applications to or grants from other funding bodies for the same project concept (from you or another researcher).
• Independent line of research: If you are working or will be working in a larger group, please clarify how your project relates to the other projects in the group. If you are continuing a project that was wholly or partly started during your doctoral or postdoc studies, you must also describe the relationship between your project and the research of your former supervisor.
• Clinical significance: Explain how the results of the project may be transferred into practical clinical use within the area medicine and health.
  

Relevance for viruses and virus-caused disease conditions

Describe how your project is relevant for the focus (see the definition under the heading “Focus” above) and how the project promotes the development of this field.

The description may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11.

Budget and research resources

Project personnel

State the activity level (per cent of a full-time equivalent) of all personnel active within the project, that is to say yourself, any other researchers and other personnel. Please also state the salary you are applying for, for yourself and/or other personnel active within the project, both as a percentage of a full-time salary and as actual annual amounts (including social security contributions). Please state the amounts in Swedish krona, rounded to the nearest 1 000 SEK.

Other costs

Describe any other costs of the project (premises costs, running costs and depreciation costs). Please state the amounts in Swedish krona, rounded to the nearest 1 000 SEK.

You may include depreciation costs for equipment to be used in the project, provided that

• the equipment has an economic life of at least three years
• the equipment has an acquisition value above a certain amount
• the need cannot be satisfied through use of national or international infrastructure supported by the Swedish Research Council and thereby open to all.

You may only include the proportion of depreciation costs that corresponds to the use of the equipment in the proposed project, and you may not include depreciation costs for equipment that is wholly funded by other grants. Please contact your administrating organisation for information about what is included in local research infrastructure, acquisition values or how to calculate depreciation costs.

Total cost of the project

Prisma will automatically add up your budget items in a table. The total amount you are applying for shall also include indirect costs. You will have to add these to the table yourself. Here you can also add any additional costs that the project entails (for which you are not seeking funding under this call).

Please contact your administrating organisation if you have any questions about what constitutes indirect and direct costs.

Justification of the budget applied for

Justify briefly each cost applied for in your budget. The description may cover a maximum of 4 000 characters including blank spaces. This is approximately one A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing.

Other funding

Please state your or any other researcher’s funding for the project over and above what is applied for in this application. Please state the amounts in Swedish krona, rounded to the nearest 1 000 SEK.

Publications

Applicant’s publication list

Please attach your publication list drawn up according to the headings and information below. The list shall cover a maximum of 5 page-numbered A4 pages in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing and 2.5 cm margins.

Sort the publications under each heading in reverse chronological order, so that the latest publication is at the top of the list. Please only include articles or equivalent that are published or accepted for publication at the time of applying. The author name order shall be identical to that of the published work. The application cannot be supplemented with publications after the deadline for the call.

1. Selection of publications: List the 10 publications of greatest importance to your application. Describe how you contributed to each publication, and its relevance to the research project described (maximum 4 lines per publication). Highlight your name in bold in the author list.

2. Relevant publications from 2013–2021: In this part, the publications listed under Item 1 shall also be included if they have been published during the period in question. Sort the publications, with your name highlighted in bold in the author list, under each heading (publication type) in the following order:

• Peer-reviewed original articles
• Peer-reviewed conference contributions, the results of which are not included in other publications
• Peer-reviewed edited volumes
• Research review articles
• Peer-reviewed books and book chapters
• Other publications including popular science books/presentations

3. Number of publications: Specify how many publications you have under each heading (type of publication) below.

• Total number of peer-reviewed original articles
• Total number of peer-reviewed research review articles
• Total number of other publications including patents
• Number of peer-reviewed original articles from 2013–2021
• Number of peer-reviewed research review articles from 2013–2021
• Number of other publications including patents from 2013–2021

Please note that no further bibliometric information shall be stated in the application.

Participating researchers’ publication lists

Attach all participating researchers’ publications lists joined up into one file. The list for each researcher shall include the 10 publications that are the most relevant to the research described, and shall cover a maximum of 1 A4 page in Arial, font size 11, single line spacing and 2.5 cm margins. The name of the researcher in question shall be highlighted in bold and also be included in the page header of each list.

Please only include articles or equivalent that are published or accepted for publication at the time of applying. The author name order shall be identical to that of the published work. The application cannot be supplemented with publications after the deadline for the call.

The publications shall be of the types: Peer-reviewed original articles, conference contributions, edited volumes, research review articles, books and book chapters, and other publications including popular science books/presentations.

Administrating organisation

Please state the administrating organisation and project site.

Participants

Here you as applicant may invite other participating researchers and administrators to your application.

CV

Under this tab, please upload your relevant CV information from your personal account in Prisma. Any participating researchers must upload their own CV information to the application.

The following information (where available) must always be included in each CV:

• Education: First, second and third cycle higher education and specialist degrees.
• Work: Current employment (including employment form) and longer relevant employment held, postdoctoral visits (also included as employment if relevant), research exchanges relevant to the research described and any longer interruptions in the research that have impacted on your opportunity to gain merit as a researcher.
• Merits and awards: Docentship/associate professorship, supervisees (postdoctoral and doctoral students; state the number of persons in each category and list the names of the up to 10 most relevant to you), up to 10 of your most relevant grants awarded in competition, up to 10 of your most relevant prizes and awards, and up to 20 other merits relevant to the application.
• Intellectual property rights: For example, patents and open access computer programs developed by you; state up to 10 of your most relevant.

Scientific quality is the fundamental criterion when the Swedish Research Council allocates grants to research. Your application is evaluated in competition with the other applications on the basis of the following evaluation criteria.

Evaluation process

Your application for project grant for research on virus and virus-caused diseases is evaluated by a review panel with international researchers as members.

At least five members review and grade your application individually. The entire review panel then meets to discuss and prioritise the applications, and finally to make a proposal for a decision to the Scientific Council for Medicine and Health.

Review panel Opens in new window.

In order to enable more in-depth discussions of applications of higher quality that have a reasonable chance of being funded, the applications that received the lowest grades from the panel members are not discussed in detail at the review panel meeting. Following the grant decision, all applications receive a final statement stating that includes the review panels’ grading of the application. The applications that have been discussed in more detail at the panel meeting receive an individual final statement which, in addition to the grades, also contains a summary of the review panel’s discussion and joint assessment of the scientific quality of the application.

Here you will find a more comprehensive description of the Swedish Research Council's assessment of applications. Opens in new window.

Evaluation criteria and guiding questions

The evaluation of the scientific quality of your application is made based on four basic criteria (Scientific quality of the proposed research, Novelty and originality, Merits of the applicant, Feasibility). The purpose of using several components is to achieve a multi-faceted evaluation. In general, the scientific quality of the project receives a greater focus when evaluating project support applications. The criteria are assessed on a seven-grade scale, except for feasibility, which is assessed on a three-grade grade scale. In addition to the basic criteria, your application is also evaluated using an additional criterion (Relevance) on a 3-grade scale. The relevance-criterion is not weighed into the overall grade but when applications are compared and ranking in relation to others. Thus, an application can be of high scientific quality, but low relevance (or vice versa).

For each criterion, there are guiding questions to support the panel members’ evaluation of your application. These can also function as guidance for you when you write your application.

Scientific quality of the proposed research (1–7)

Guiding questions:

• Will the project, if successful, significantly advance our understanding of the field?
• Is the research proposal relevant for medical research?
• Is the definition of the problems and proposed solutions clear and compelling?
• Do the study design, research questions and hypotheses meet the standard of the highest scientific quality?
• Are the hypotheses clearly defined and based on the appropriate literature and/or preliminary data?
• Are potential problems and alternative strategies identified and presented?
• Are methods, including data analysis and statistics, appropriate for the project and well described?
• Are the ethical considerations for the proposed project described and addressed properly?
• If sex and gender is described as relevant to the research project, has the applicant considered sex and gender in the description of the proposed work, for instance as part of preliminary data, the choice of samples or study population, or data analyses?

Novelty and originality (1–7)

Guiding questions:

• Does the project extend or challenge current understanding, opinion or practice in its field?
• Is the project built on a unique combination of ideas, preliminary data, and different methodologies to create novel approaches to address the question at hand?
• Is there potential for creation of new knowledge, novel technologies, or new directions for research and advancement of the field?
• Will completion of the aims improve scientific knowledge, technical capability, and/or clinical practice?
• Does the researcher propose a line of research that has the potential to significantly advance current knowledge in the field or is he/she simply adding details to existing knowledge?

Merits of the applicant (1–7)

Guiding questions:

• Does the applicant have sufficient research experience, expertise, level of independence and scientific network for implementation of the proposed project?
• How do the applicant’s academic qualifications and achievements relate to his or her career age?
• Does the applicant have a documented independent line of investigation?
• Does the publication record suggest a coherent line of investigation? Does the applicant report publications as senior author? Focus is on the most relevant and important publications and reports, with emphasis on quality rather than quantity.

Feasibility (1–3)

Guiding questions:

• Considering the project as a whole, including participating researchers, does the applicant or project group have sufficient competence for completion of the project?
• Is the project leader’s level of activity within the project sufficient with regard to the proposed research plan?
• Is the general design, including the time-frame, realistic for implementing the proposed project?
• Are the materials, methods (including statistics and/or power calculations), experimental models, and when appropriate patient/study cohorts adequate and well adapted to the hypothesis or research question?

Overall grade (1–7)

The above subsidiary criteria are weighed together into an overall grade, which reflects the review panel’s joint evaluation of the application’s scientific quality.

Relevance for virus and virus-caused diseases (1-3)

Guiding questions:

• To what extent is the proposal relevant to basic virology and/or fundamental disease mechanisms caused by viruses (including causal relationships between virus-caused infections and other diseases)?
• Does the project have the potential to develop new treatment, improve treatment and/or decrease the transmission of virus-caused infections?