Cross-council assessment

Independent Research Fund Denmark finds it important that interdisciplinary applications have the same opportunities for funding as single-disciplinary projects and therefore supports interdisciplinary as well as single-disciplinary projects of high quality. The fund has allocated a special funding pool for the applications that are deemed to span across the councils.

How will my application be assessed?

Each of the five research councils assesses interdisciplinary proposals within the scope of the council’s research areas. Application that span across the boundaries of the research councils are processed in collaboration between the research councils, coordinated by DFF | Cross-council Committee, composed of the chair persons from each of the five research councils. The committee’s work is supported by council members with relevant scientific expertise.

If you have requested that your application is assessed by more than one council, it will be presented to the cross-council committee, which will decide on the processing of the application. 

Likewise, applications submitted to only one council will be presented to DFF | Cross-council Committee, if the applied-to council deems that the application’s research content fully or partially falls within another research council.

DFF | Cross-council Committee can make the following decisions about an application:

• The application is assessed by one council only. The application may be referred to another council than the one(s) you applied to, for example, if the research project has only a minor scientific relation to one or more of the council(s) that you applied to.
• The assessment in one council will be supplemented by a scientific statement from one or more of the other councils.
• The application is assessed as a cross-council application, i.e., the application is assessed by members from more than one council. Based on the scientific assessments from the involved council members(s) and potential supplementary external reviews, DFF | Cross-council Committee carries out the final assessment and decides whether the applicant should be granted.

Read more about DFF | Cross-council Committee. 

Can I request that my application is not transferred to another council?

DFF | Cross-council Committee is not obliged to follow your requests concerning the council(s) that will assess your application. However, your application will never be referred to another council than the one(s) applied for, if you choose “No” in the section “Submission to other councils” in the application form (under the headline “Referral to other research councils”). If you have chosen that your application cannot be referred to another council, DFF | Cross-council Committee may still decide to ask for a scientific statement from one or more of the councils that you have not chosen. 

In case the fund judges that your application should be transferred to a different council, the fund may initiate a consultation procedure to ensure that you fulfil any possible council-specific requirements that apply to the council, which your application is transferred to.

You can read more about how to submit a cross-council application in e-grant on the page How do I create an application?.