Winners of scholarships from the Minister of Education and Science (MEiN) for outstanding young researchers have just issued an open letter to the Polish Prime Minister and the Minister of Science, in which they call for an increase in spending on Polish research and a revision of available research funding channels.
The letter is signed by 111 researchers working at Polish institutions, such as universities, PAS institutes and other research institutes. The signatories point out that many of them decided to stay in Poland and build on Polish science thanks to the favourable conditions created, among other factors, by the National Science Centre and the availability of grants awarded via reliable call procedures. “The limited spending on the NCN on the one hand, and growing inflation on the other, have pushed more and more of our younger colleagues to consider leaving the Polish academic community”, the signatories write.
They also suggest measures that should be taken to reverse the process and create the right conditions for the development of research and economic growth in our country. “We appeal to you to consider a revision of the resources spent on the mission of the National Science Centre as the flagship institution that guarantees politically independent and merit-based funding of scientific research. At the same time, we believe there should be a reasonable increase in resources dedicated to the operations of research centres…”, they emphasise.
The open letter follows a succession of appeals issued by the scientific community in relation to the current situation in Polish science. At the end of November, Dariusz Rakusa from the University of Wrocław, Prof. Marek Figlerowicz from the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, PAS and Prof. Przemysław Wojtaszek from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań started a petition to request improvements in the area, which can still be signed here.
In 2015, the state subsidy for the NCN and its research-funding mission stood at 871 million zlotys. Three years later, it increased to 1.226 billion. In 2022, the figure rose to 1.392 billion zlotys and remained unchanged in 2023. This means that between 2015 and 2018, the agency’s call budget grew by more than 40%, but between 2018 and 2023 only increased by a meagre 13%. Over the same period, the total funds requested annually by applicants in NCN calls increased by c. 59%: from 5.4 billion zlotys in 2018 to c. 8.6 billion in 2022.
Due to NCN’s frozen budget, the success rate in its recently concluded calls dropped to 8.06% for OPUS and 10.73% for PRELUDIUM. Never before in its history has the NCN been able to fund such a small proportion of projects.
The need to increase NCN funding was recently addressed by Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director in an interview published by “Forum Akademickie”.