Subsidies

As a researcher at THUAS, you concern yourself with practice oriented research. There is a significant chance that there are subsidies available with which your research can be deepened or broadened. Subsidies are requested before starting a research project.

The subsidy landscape is wide and encompasses various plans, each with their own purpose and rating criteria. A subsidy is an instrument with which a government (or institution) aims to realize the objectives of its policies. It is essential to be cognizant of this fact when requesting a subsidy.

1. Goal – What does the subsidy provider want to achieve?

Every subsidy has a goal. Examples are: stimulating circular economics, personal and professional development or to promote practice oriented research. Your project offers a solution for a problem and contributes to reaches these set goals.

2. Open Access, Peer Review, Licensing and OA Costs

You can also decide to publish directly in a fully open access journal, or alternatively in a hybrid journal. Scientific journals often charge a fee per publication to have the article published open access (OA): the so-called APCs (Article Processing Charges). Almost 70% of OA publications are free of charge. For the remaining 30%, the average cost is €1,500 per item. Take this into account when applying for grants from SIA, NWO, ZonMW, EU, etc. For that matter, more and more funds require OA publication.

The DOAJ list provides a comprehensive overview of approximately 10,000 good quality OA journals, including any usage licences (Creative Commons [link naar interne vertaalde pagina]), transparency on the peer review process, and APC rates.

The QOAM list is also an overview of high-quality OA and hybrid journals with their quality score, OA transparency and APC rates.

There are also fully OA publishers such as Copernicus, PLoS, Biomed, Frontiers, PeerJ and MDPI, where publication costs are often below the €1,500 average, but which may not always be very relevant in their field.

3. Applicant - Who is eligible?

Some subsidies have to be requested by an educational institution. For other subsidies it is a requirement to cooperate with other educational partners or SME’s. Other times it is required that you are situated in a certain province or region. In other words: there is an array of subsidies on municipal, regional, provincial, national or international level.

4. Subsidy amount – how high is the amount of a subsidy?

Where one subsidy is meant for smaller projects with a modest budget, others are only available for large-scale R&D projects. For every plan a subsidy percentage is stated, the rest is traditionally an out of pocket expense. For some subsidies it is mandatory to have a minimum or maximum reserve.

5. Frequency of openings – How often is there a call for research projects?

Frequency of openings – How often is there a call for research projects? There exist long-term programs that open on an irregular basis. Often the amount of rounds is dependent on the remaining budget. Other plans open only once and then disappear from the program.

6. Assessment method – How are the subsidy requests judged?

Requests can be handled in different ways such as on the first come first serve principle. Others are known as tenders – this means that after opening all requests are rated at the same time upon which a selection will be made.

Subsidy supplyers

The supply of subsidies is diverse. Depending on your project, generic or thematic subsidies can be relevant. There is also the possibility of applying for a large-scale European or municipal subsidy. Below you find several important institutions that provide subsidies.

  • The Dutch Organization for Scientific Research (NWO): is the most important science financing body in the Netherlands. NWO invests almost a billion euro’s in research on a yearly basis among others by making use of NWA-ORC and thematic calls.
  • Regieorgaan SIA: as part of NOW, SIA finances practice oriented research. The most well-known plans are RAAK and KIEM.
  • Nationaal regieorgaan onderwijsonderzoek (NRO): offers different forms of financing for research into education and education innovations such as the Comeniusprogram.
  • ZonMw: finances research into healthcare and stimulates the use of developed knowledge in order to improve the healthcare sector and public health in general.
  • Rijksdienst voor Ondernemend Nederland (RVO): supplies subsidies to companies and knowledge institutions for projects on innovation, agriculture, sustainability and international affairs.
  • The European Union: subsidies for projects or activities on various policy terrains of the EU. Horizon Europe is the main subsidy supplier on research and innovation.

Funding Support Office

You can contact the Funding Support Office if you see ways in which your project may claim a subsidy in order to review whether your research projects fits the requirements.

THUAS’ Funding Support Office assists employees when applying and management of subsidies. With our service we want to stimulate the quality of subsidy requests and project plans and simplify the process safeguarding, management and final assessment.

By using newsletters, mailings, personal advice sessions and workshops we inform employees of THUAS proactively on subsidy plans, opportunities, deadlines and relevant public- and institutional policies and interesting events. Personalized information? Reach out to us for a meeting!

What we do for you

You can reach us for assistance with writing a subsidy request and making a budget. We do this by organizing meetings on the exact completion of this support. This ranges from a single review to more active support with working on text and budgets. The sooner you reach out, the more we can mean for each other.

The benefits of reaching out to FSO

The BoD has given us the task to manage internal subsidy procedures so that you receive the right signatures and forms in due time. We have the knowledge of and experience with the important subsidies for universities of applied science such as RAAK, NWA, Comenius, Erasmus+ and the HEA 2018-2022. Reach us as soon as possible! We support project managers of approved subsidy requests with the execution of their projects. After the approval we plan meetings on evaluating the conditions upon which the project is to be executed based on the demands of the subsidy plan and advise on the direction of the administrative organization and internal control (AO/IC). Depending on the length and financial dimension of the project we plan one or multiple progress meetings.