Carrying out Your Project

FWF funding offers researchers maximum flexibility to conduct basic research at the highest level and to gain new insights. An open-access policy and guidelines on integrity and ethics are highly relevant to the project phase.

During the project phase, the FWF offers researchers and their teams the freedom they need to conduct independent research and take unexpected directions. The funding is provided as a global budget that researchers are free to use under the general terms of the grant agreement as the project progresses. The grant agreement, which you will receive from the FWF after your proposal has been approved, contains all relevant information.

Grant agreement, guidelines, and supplementary information

Once your proposal has been approved, you and your research institution will receive a grant agreement from the FWF, along with other important supplementary information and guidelines. The reviews of your proposal will also be forwarded to you. Before you can start your project, the original grant agreement must be returned to the FWF electronically using the sproof platform (digitally signed by an authorized signatory at your research institution under PROFI or by the principal investigator under ad personam mode), along with the data management plan, the PR proposal summary (in German and English), any attached forms, and any program-specific documents (these are uploaded to elane). Please make sure that the FWF has received all documents at least one month before the start of the project. After that, nothing stands between you and the successful launch of your project.

Responsible research

Research integrity and research ethics are integral parts of the research process and determine the quality of excellent research according to the highest international standards. Compliance with the rules of good research practice and internationally established ethical standards are key when conducting research projects. For more information, please see the section on integrity and ethics.

Integrity and Ethics

Open Science

Open Science refers to open and collaborative research practices that enable open access to scientific knowledge and research processes, resulting in the greatest possible transparency and reusability.

As a signatory of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the FWF is committed to supporting open access to the academic publications and research data generated by its researchers. The FWF’s Open-Access Policy covers all forms of publishing. Find out more about the FWF’s open-access activities and funding options in the open science section.

Open Science

Research Data Management

Research data management is an integral part of good research practice (see Research Integrity & Research Ethics). The FWF therefore requires a Data Management Plan (DMP) for all projects approved under the new guidelines after January 1, 2019. A data management plan (DMP) describes how data and its metadata are collected, organized, stored, published, shared, and archived for a given project.

Research Data Management

Acknowledging the FWF using the Grant-DOI

The FWF must be named as the funding body in every public presentation and/or publication of research results from FWF-funded projects. The following citation must be used: “This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [grant DOI].”

The following text must be included in all peer-reviewed publications (e.g., journal articles) upon submission: “This research was funded in whole or in part by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) [grant DOI]. For open access purposes, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright license to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission.” 

Equivalent text to be included for publications in German: „Diese Forschung wurde gänzlich oder teilweise durch den Wissenschaftsfonds FWF finanziert [Grant-DOI]. Zum Zweck des freien Zugangs hat der:die Autor:in für jedwede akzeptierte Manuskriptversion, die sich aus dieser Einreichung ergibt, eine „Creative Commons Attribution CC BY“-Lizenz vergeben.“

The grant DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a persistent identifier for information on funded projects and is indicated on each project’s page on the Research Radar page. It allows for clear identification, citation, and automatic linking of project information; By resolving the DOI in the DOI resolver (Resolve a DOI Name), the user is automatically redirected to project page on the FWF website. The grant DOI is made up of an unchanging FWF prefix (10.55776/), which is the same for all DOI numbers and uniquely identifies the FWF, and the FWF ID (previously called the project number).

Please find further information in the Open-Access Policy.

Transparency and science communication

It’s important to the FWF to strengthen science communication by providing the public with plain-language, easily understandable information on the research we fund. For this reason, researchers are required to provide a PR proposal summary to the FWF before the start of the project and a PR summary of the research project and its results after completion. With these two texts, you are helping to increase society's understanding of basic research. Both summaries will be published together with the grant amount on the FWF Research Radar page. For more information, please see PR summaries.

PR summaries

Project transfer to/from abroad – “Money follows Researcher”

The FWF under certain conditions allows for the transfer of FWF-funded projects in specific partner countries. Depending on whether an ad-personam project or a PROFI project is concerned, the administrative steps vary. Vice versa, projects approved by specific international partner funding organisations can be transferred to Austria under certain circumstances. For details, please consult the info sheet “Money follows Researcher”.

Annual proof of the appropriate use of the project funds

FWF funding offers researchers maximum flexibility. This depends, however, on the appropriate use of the funding, which is defined in the application guidelines, the General Terms and Conditions of Grant Agreements, and the grant agreement itself. This must be documented once a year in the form of an annual statement of costs submitted to the FWF. For further questions regarding the use of funds, please see the FAQ or contact your FWF Project Officer.

Changes to ongoing projects

FWF funding allows for a number of changes to be made during the course of an ongoing project. These include, for example, options for the cost-neutral extension of a project, interruptions due to maternity leave or other important grounds or, under certain conditions, a change of research institution or principal investigator. For more information, please refer to the FAQ. Please contact your FWF Project Officer if you need to make any changes to your ongoing project.