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?

Independent Research Fund Denmark finds it important that interdisciplinary applications have the same opportunities for funding as single-disciplinary projects. The council supports interdisciplinary as well as single-disciplinary projects of high quality. Independent Research Fund Denmark has allocated a special pool for applications deemed to be truly suitable for cross-council processing.

Each of the five research councils handles the interdisciplinarity that falls within the scope of the council’s area of research. Applications that cross the boundaries of the research councils are handled in collaboration between the research councils and coordinated by DFF | Cross-council Committee, which comprises the chairs of the five research councils. The committee’s work is supported by selected 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 DFF | Cross-council Committee, which will decide on the processing of the application.

In the same way, applications submitted to only one council will be presented to DFF | Cross-council Committee, if the council applied for assesses the research project to fully or partially fall within the scientific field of another research council.

DFF | Cross-council Committee may 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, if, for instance, the research project has only a minor scientific relation to one or more of the councils that you applied to.
• The assessment in one council will include 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 initially assessed by members from more than one council. Based on the scientific assessments from the involved council members and potential supplementary external reviews, the DFF | Cross-council Committee makes the final assessment and decides whether the applicant receives a grant.

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 which council(s) will assess your application. However, your application will never be referred to another council than the one(s) decided by you, if you choose “No” in the section “Submission to multiple 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, the DFF | Cross-council Committee may still decide to ask for a scientific opinion from one or more of the other councils not chosen by you. 

In case Independent Research Fund Denmark judges that your application should be transferred to a different council, DFF 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?.