Austria

EUP OHAMR joint transnational call 2026: National rules and requirements for applicants from Austria.

The information below of the national rules and requirements is only a summary. Please visit the national website and contact the national contact person for full details.

Fonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FWF)

Eligibility institutions

All Austrian research institutions are eligible to apply if they are registered in the FWF’s research institution portal. Applications are to be submitted by the research institution where the project is to be carried out.

Eligible experimental approaches and disciplines

Funding may be requested for projects in basic research that are clearly defined, innovative, with plausibly described objectives and methods, and are limited in duration. For more information, see FWF Application Guidelines, section 1.2.

Eligibility criteria for the Principal Investigator

The proposed research must be carried out in Austria under the auspices of the Austrian lead research institution. The Principal Investigator must be employed at the Austrian research institution applying for funding at the time the project is scheduled to begin.

All Austrian research institutions are eligible to apply if they are registered in the FWF’s research institution portal. Applications are to be submitted by the research institution where the project is to be carried out. Neither a specific academic degree nor Austrian citizenship is required to act as principal investigator. The Principal Investigator must, however, have appropriate scientific qualifications (see FWF Application Guidelines, section 1.4) and sufficient time resources to carry out the proposed research. Please refer to the general FWF Application Guidelines and the respective application and project number limit.

For information on submitting an application from abroad please refer to the information on the FWF website on applying from abroad.

Eligible costs

Project-specific costs are eligible for funding. These include personnel and non-personnel costs that are needed to carry out the project and that are not included in the infrastructure provided by the research institution. The FWF does not finance the infrastructure or basic equipment of research institutions. The research institution must provide the necessary infrastructure.

Personnel costs for administrative tasks cannot be funded by the FWF. The current FWF Personnel Costs and Salary Rates scaleindicates the salaries that may be requested. The FWF grants an annual salary adjustment to compensate for inflation, which is applied automatically to all contracts of employment in Principal Investigator projects that are valid when the adjustment takes effect. Please refer to the FWF Application Guidelines.

Submission of the proposal at the national level

In addition to the application at the EUP OHAMR level, administrative data (in accordance with the FWF Guidelines for Principal Investigator Projects) must be submitted online to the FWF Elane portal. This is required already at the pre-proposal stage via the programme category “PIK – International Projects preproposal” no later than Tuesday 3rd February 2026, 14:00 CET.

For the full proposal stage applicants must choose the programme category “KIN– International – Multilateral Initiatives” (Deadline Thursday 18th June 2026, 14:00 CET). Both steps are mandatory.

Please note:

• The initial grant period must be 36 months – in accordance with the EUP OHAMR regulations (in contrast to the duration specified in the FWF Guidelines for Principal Investigator Projects).
• All proposals must be submitted using the elane online portal. Project funding is administered through the research institution (PROFI mode); for this reason, the submission must be approved in the application portal both by the applicant and by the respective research institution before the respective deadlines (see above).
• The number of ongoing/approved projects in which one researcher can serve as principal investigator is limited to three in the Stand-Alone Projects Programme, International Programmes, Clinical Research and Arts-Based Research Programmes.

Information on the limit of the number of ongoing/approved projects and the limit of applications that can be submitted can be found here: Application and project number limit (pdf, fwf.ac.at).

Publications

The principal investigator’s publication record over the last five years must be internationally visible and commensurate with the expected career path in their field. The following criteria apply for the assessment of an applicant’s publication record and initiation of the review process:

• Quality assurance: Most relevant in assessing the applicant’s publication record are those publications that have been subject to a quality assurance procedure in line with international standards (peer review or an equivalent procedure; in the natural and life sciences, peer review is expected). Journals must usually be listed in Web of Science, Scopus, or the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). For journals not listed in those databases, or for monographs, edited volumes, contributions to edited volumes, or other publication types, the applicant must provide a link to the publisher’s website which contains a description of the applicable quality assurance procedure. Should no such description be available on the website, it is the applicant’s responsibility to provide evidence that the publication has been subject to a quality assurance procedure in accordance with the standards of the field.
• International visibility: The majority of the applicant’s publications must have a wider than national reach. In the natural sciences, life sciences, and social sciences, most of the publications listed must be in English.

Number/scope and quality of the publications must be commensurate with the researcher’s expectable career path and the respective discipline. At least two publications must be quality-assured and internationally visible publications with a substantial and independent contribution by the applicant. At least one publication with first, last, or corresponding authorship is required, with the exception of publications in journals (or disciplines) that rank authors alphabetically. If any such publications are included in the required document PI_publication.pdf, the applicant’s contribution must be specified.

Further guidance

If there is any uncertainty about general application requirements or about accounting for career interruptions, the FWF recommends contacting the FWF Office or the FWF Equal Opportunities and Diversity in Research Funding unit in good time before submitting the application to confirm that all requirements are met and that any career interruptions can be accounted for. In cases of doubt, the appropriate decision-making bodies of the FWF shall decide on applicants’ eligibility.