Principles and guidelines for the allocation of operating funds to the university college's research fellows

Principles:

• PhD students/research fellows normally receive in total NOK 150,000 of operating funds for the period of their PhD fellowship. Any operating funds allocated to research fellows from externally funded projects must be deducted from this sum.
• The funds can be used throughout the research fellowship period.
• It is expected that the research fellows will clarify the use of operating assets with their supervisor. The vice dean for research has personal responsibility for employees with the position code "research fellow", and approves the invoices for these research fellows in dialogue with the supervisor. In those cases where someone other than the vice dean research has personnel responsibility for staff in the research program, these invoices will be approved in dialogue with the supervisor.
• For research fellows in the 3 year program are budgeted initially with NOK 50 000 per year.
• For research fellows in the 4 year program are budgeted initially with NOK 37 500 per year.
• Costs related to the operating funds are entered on the same work order as the rest of the fellow's costs (salary, guidance, etc.)

Practical solutions:

• A web report is created on the Finance web where research fellows can login and check themselves how much they have used of the operating funds so far during their fellowship period.
  • Research fellows admitted to the new organization (after 01.08.2021) can use the web report.
  • For research fellows admitted before the new organization (01.08.2021), an overview of funds used before 01.08.2021 is made. The research fellows must take this into account when using the web report.

The faculty/institute where the research fellow is employed must note the following:

• The research fellow's agreed operating budget is allocated to the individual fellow over the agreed time period. The faculties/departments cannot earmark residual funds from annually allocated funds for research fellows as operating funds for the following year, and therefore must deal with the natural fluctuations in these operating expenses within their annual budgets.
• It is assumed that the overall fluctuations in operating expenses in the research fellows' portfolios will largely be equalized since the research fellows are in different phases of their research fellow programs.