Launch of the Weave Lead Agency Initiative
The existing D-A-CH and D-Lux Lead Agency Procedures will partially be replaced by Weave as of January 2021; funding opportunities with other Weave signatory organisations will be taken up incrementally.
The Weave Lead Agency Procedure (Weave) is a new initiative developed by European funding organisations to support excellent collaborative research across borders. By means of a single review process, the initiative aims to simplify the submission and selection procedures for collaborative research proposals involving researchers from up to three European countries or regions.
The Weave procedure will be applied to existing funding programmes, and the Weave signatory organisations will specify which funding programmes are open to Weave. It is a bottom-up mechanism, with no additional restrictions regarding the thematic focus or subject matter covered by the proposals, other than those provided for by the relevant national and/or regional funding mechanisms.
Within Weave, researchers from two up to three European countries or regions are able to submit a collaborative research proposal to any of the participating funders. To submit a proposal, all applicants must meet the eligibility requirements of their respective Weave signatory organisation.
Weave is based on the Lead Agency Procedure principle. The team of applicants selects a coordinating applicant, who submits the joint proposal to the respective Weave funding organisation in his/her country. This organisation acts as the Lead Agency for the proposal. The other applicants (co-applicants) must submit a copy of the proposal to their respective funding agencies (the Partner Agency/Agencies) within one week. The Lead Agency is responsible for the evaluation process in compliance with its internal rules set out for the respective programme. Following the assessment, it communicates its funding recommendation to the other funding organisations involved (the Partner Agencies) for approval and budgetary purposes.
Please note that Weave is not a separate funding programme. Research projects are funded through national or regional research programmes that are managed by Weave signatory organisations. There is no separate budget available for Weave; proposals must compete with all other proposals submitted for the national and regional funding schemes opened to Weave. Funders will only provide funding within their national or regional borders. In the context of Weave, the funding organisations aim to support the top 20 percent of proposals submitted in the respective evaluation.
The Weave initiative brings together twelve research funding organisations (see link below). By enabling bilateral as well as trilateral scientific cooperation within Europe, the initiative contributes to the realisation of the European Research Area. Please note that Weave will be rolled out progressively. Therefore, not all configurations for collaboration will be available under Weave immediately upon its launch. Collaboration will be allowed between selected partners and will be enlarged incrementally.
DFG-specific information:
The DFG funding scheme open to Weave is the Individual Research Grants Programme (“Sachbeihilfe”).
As of 1 January 2021, the DFG will start to apply the new Weave Lead Agency Procedure together with the following funding organisations:
- Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
- Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)
- Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF)
The D-A-CH and D-Lux Lead Agency Procedures in the Individual Research Grants Programme (“Sachbeihilfe”) will be replaced by Weave. From January 2021 on, proposals for collaborations with FNR (Luxemburg), FWF (Austria) and SNSF (Switzerland) will only be accepted via Weave.
Please note that the coordinated research programmes such as Research Units (Forschungsgruppen) and Priority Programmes (Schwerpunktprogramme) etc. are not covered by Weave. The D-A-CH and D-Lux Lead Agency Procedures continue to apply for these programmes (however, please note that not all coordinated programmes can be combined with partners from every country, as the corresponding funding abroad will not be covered by every partner organisation for each programme; for details please refer to the D-A-CH and D-Lux information on the DFG website).
For further details on the DFG’s application process, please refer to:
- the DFG website on the Weave Lead Agency Procedure; see link below
- the supplementary instructions for proposals within the Weave Lead Agency Procedure (DFG-form 54.019; in German only), see link below
Proposals with DFG as the Lead Agency can be submitted any time. Please make sure to also consult the websites of the other funding organisations involved in a proposal (see links below) as they may be important information to consider prior to submitting a proposal, e.g. eligibility requirements, deadlines, submission of additional documents, etc.
Planning provides for Weave to be implemented with GAČR (Czech Republic) and NCN (Poland) over the course of 2021. Announcements are expected for the end of February (GAČR-DFG) and mid-September 2021 (NCN-DFG).
Data Protection
Please note the DFG’s data protection notice on research funding (see link below). If necessary, please forward this information to any individuals whose data will be processed by DFG due to their involvement in your project.
Further Information
Information on Weave in German (Antragstellung mit europäischen Kooperationspartnerinnen und -partnern im Weave Lead Agency-Verfahren):
Information on Weave in English:
Supplementary instructions for proposals within the Weave Lead Agency Procedure; currently available in German only: „Ergänzender Leitfaden zur Antragstellung im Rahmen einer grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation im Weave Lead Agency-Verfahren (Weave LAV)“ (DFG-Vordruck 54.019):
DFG’s Electronic Proposal Processing System for Applicants – elan:
DFG’s data protection notice on research funding:
Contact at DFG:
Further information of the partner organisations:
Austrian Science Fund (Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung FWF):
Luxembourg National Research Fund (Fonds National de la Recherche Luxembourg FNR):
Swiss National Science Foundation (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung SNF):
General website of the Weave initiative: