At its meeting on 20 September 2018, the Joint Committee of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) approved modifications to its Scientific Networks Programme. Once limited to early career researchers, the programme is now open to researchers at all career stages. Networks generally consist of 10 to 20 individuals who seek to engage in multi-year scientific exchange and cooperation on a research topic area of their choice across locations to attain a specific outcome.

Scientific networks may be used

• to promote national and international networking between researchers at an early stage of their careers. Supporting early career researchers is especially important to the DFG.
• to promote networking between researchers who want to work on new interdisciplinary or strategic research questions in a results-focussed approach and require a flexible organisational framework in which to do so.
• to promote networking between researchers who want to address topic areas of a strategic nature where the exchange of ideas at international level appear to be particularly productive. To be eligible for funding, either the research must be expected to produce important impetus for Germany or the research policy aspect of the cooperation with individuals in the chosen country or countries must play an essential role.

Proposals to the modified programme can be submitted as of January 2019.

Further Information

The modified guidelines with proposal preparation instructions (DFG form 1.03 – 1/19) can be found at:

• www.dfg.de/foerderung/programme/einzelfoerderung/ wissenschaftliche_netzwerke/formulare_merkblaetter

DFG Head Office contact:

• Dr. Corinne Flacke, 
  Humanities and Social Sciences 2, 
  corinne.flacke@dfg.de