Villum Experiment Outcome Study

The primary applicant must be an internationally recognized, permanently employed researcher at a Danish or European public research institution within the field of Research on Research. In the context of this call, European means based in an EU member state, or in Norway, Switzerland or the UK.

The foundation welcomes collaborative proposals spanning more than one research group. However, the application is submitted by a single principal investigator, and the entire grant is administered by their home institution.

Successful applicants will – subject to signing a data agreement with the foundation – gain access to a data set containing full texts of approx. 3700 applications submitted to the Villum Experiment programme between 2017 and 2025, as well as information on applicants, assessment panels and assessment results. Final reports from finished projects will also be available. Access will be given on condition that only aggregate results, not attributable to specific applicants or applications, are published in the outcomes of the project.

The applications will be assessed by the Villum Foundation working group for technical and natural science, based on the following criteria:

• Relevance of the project objectives to the aim of the call
• Extent to which the project objectives go beyond state of the art
• Extent to which the project objectives can only be achieved by access to the Villum Experiment data set
• Qualifications of the applicant to carry out the proposed project
• Credibility of the project plan to reach the project objectives
• Potential impact of the project results beyond the end of the project.

Applications will be subject to distributed peer review. Each applicant will be required to review up to five applications from the call. By submitting an application to this call you confirm that you will carry out the reviewing in a fair, balanced and timely way. Failure to do so will impact negatively on your own application.

Applicants will receive the peer reviews in anonymized form and will get the opportunity to reply to them.

The final recommendation to the board for rejection or approval will be made by our Working Group for Technical and Natural Science, based on the applications, the peer reviews and the reply to the peer reviews.

• 14 January 2026, 2 PM: Deadline for applications
• 20 January 2026: Applicants receive up to five applications for review
• 27 February 2026: Deadline for applicants’ peer review
• 6 March 2026: Deadline for reply to the peer reviews
• June 2026: Rejection or approval of grant by the board of Villum Foundation.

If granted the project should start 1 January 2027 at the latest.

The submission must contain the following documents in pdf format, submitted as four separate files:

• Application (max. 10 pages including references)
• CV for the principal investigator and other senior project participants in the provided template
• Letter of support from the head of the department where the project will be based. Additional letters of support from relevant partners may be included.
• Budget in the provided template. All budget items should be stated in DKK.

The application  should include:

• One page summary of the proposal, its overall aims and expected impact
• Hypothesis and methodology
• Research objectives, including a description of how they will utilize the Villum Experiment data set and the extent to which they cannot be achieved without it
• A description of state-of-the-art of the research field
• A plan for carrying out the project
• A convincing strategy for dissemination of the project results.

You may apply for up to 5 million DKK, including indirect costs.

Eligible budget items include:

• Salary for PhD students, postdocs and research assistants
• Running costs
• Travel costs
• Technical assistance, if necessary to carry out the project
• Project supplement (applicants based in Denmark) / 15% flat rate indirect costs (applicants based outside Denmark). Please use the appropriate budget template below.

The salary of permanently employed scientific staff is not eligible for support. 

Villum Foundation is a party to the agreement between a number of private foundations and the Danish universities on a common model for indirect costs. This means that for projects carried out at a Danish university, indirect costs are covered through a project supplement calculated from the number of project-funded full-time academic staff equivalents in certain staff categories. The project supplement is DKK 250,000 per project-funded full-time academic staff equivalent in eligible staff categories.

Below you may find links to the papers from the initial study on the Villum Experiment programme conducted by Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy at Aarhus University.