Over the past few months, the NCN Council has discussed many topics, e.g. NCN call portfolio, principal investigator’s grace period and mentoring programme. Prof. Alicja Kazek-Kęsik writes about the work of the Council.
“Notes from Council Meeting” are articles published in Forum Akademickie, in which members of the NCN Council explain and discuss their work.
In her second article, Prof. Alicja Kazek-Kęsik writes that the principal investigator’s grace period is discussed over and over again. Under the applicable regulations, a principal investigator whose proposal is not passed on to stage two (merit-based evaluation) must wait one round of the call to resubmit their proposal. This will give them time to read the review and modify their proposal will also help reduce the processing costs of weaker proposals.
Prof. Kazek-Kęsik says that the quality of proposals has recently evolved, while researchers highlight the urge to have the restrictions relaxed. Therefore, the NCN Council has considered to amend the regulations pertaining to the grace period. “It happens more and more often that proposals submitted to stage one are evaluated very well or well, their number is higher than ever before, and it is not uncommon for only exceptional proposals to reach stage two of evaluation. (…) Therefore, the doubts raised by the scientific community are well justified,” says a member of the NCN Council.
The article also addresses NCN Council’s discussions on other restrictions of grant proposals, call portfolio and MINIATURA monitoring programme.
In the first article of the “Notes from Council Meeting” series, Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek wrote about modifications to the proposal form and evaluation criteria, PhD scholarship rates and mentoring programme. The article was published on the website of Forum Akademickie on 19 March.