Swedish-Norwegian Foundation for Equine Research in collaboration with Swedish Trotting Association welcomes research applications on trotting horse health, welfare, and longevity in the sport. The call for full scale applications opens 1st of April and closes 1st of June, 12.00.
Swedish-Norwegian Foundation for Equine Research in collaboration with Swedish Trotting Association welcomes research applications related to improved health, welfare, and longevity in the sport of trotting horses. This special call predominately focuses on research with direct relevance for the trotting industry, but also projects that relate to other horse categories can be of relevance.
The overall goal is that funded project(s) should contribute to increased knowledge for improved horse health, welfare, and longevity in the sport. The project should also contribute to increased knowledge of how injuries can be prevented and how risk of chronic injuries can be minimized. The project should contribute to improved knowledge of optimal horse management, training and competition of trotting horses, methods to identify different types of injuries or unhealth, as well as positive health indicators at an early stage, or development of improved diagnostics, treatment, and rehabilitation of commonly occurring disorders.
The call includes funding of up to 3 MSEK per year for 3 years, for research- and development project(s), during the period 2022-2025. Applicants should contribute with 25 % own funding in addition to applied funding, own funding can be in kind contribution. There is a possibility to apply for the full amount of funding available in the call if a collected application is submitted where several disciplines are combined through several part-projects, for a multidisciplinary approach for improved health and welfare of trotting horses. In this type of multidisciplinary application, the main applicant acts as coordinator for synergy effects between the sub-projects, and funding can be distributed freely between years and part-project.
For an isolated project including one disciple, funding of maximum 1 MSEK per year can be applied for during maximum 3 years.
Within project collaboration between disciplines and departments is encouraged. Available funding in the current call is limited to SEK and can only be used within Sweden. But if own funding enable collaboration with expertise over country borders this is welcomed.
A reference group including representatives from the Swedish Trotting Association and Swedish-Norwegian Foundation for Equine Research will be connected to the approved project(s), for a practical connection between the project and the practical sector allready during the project time, both for feedback from the prectical sector and for improved kommunication of project progress and resluts during the project.
The project is expected to start during November 2022. Funding can be applied for a maximum of 3 years.
Application process and requirements
Applications to this call is submitted as a full-scale application in English in one stage and should have highest scientific quality. Each main applicant may submit one application per call. The main applicant should have a doctoral degree or equivalent and be connected to a research environment. In addition to the requirements given in this call text, the instruction of the Foundation handbook should be followed unless other is given in the call text, to be able to obtain funding. Note that applications that do not follow the handbook/call text will be automatically rejected.
No upper limit of applied OH is practiced but applied OH cost cannot exceed actual costs. If a project needs to include experimental horses in the trials, this must be clearly described and justified in relation to the 3 Rs (Reduce, Refine, Replace). Each application must have a clear methods description of how many horses are planned to be studied. The application must clearly describe plan for dissemination of results to the practical horse sector/to horse owners, and how the project plans to work for projects results to be practically implemented in the same sector.
The online platform for applications has been updated this year with a modified budget to clarify Foundation requirements of declaring all applicants active part in the proposed project. The update also includes a new section related to ethical approvals needed. We appologise in beforehand if the update would result in any initial bugs and welcome feedback if any are identified. The updated platform uses the same web address as the former, so any possible favorites saved on personal computers automatically leads you to the updated platform.
