Podcast No. 1, 2025 Professor Tomasz Dietl on the priorities of the NCN Council

Professor Tomasz Dietl, the new Chair of the NCN Council, is the first guest of the NCN podcast in 2025. In an interview with Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz, he spoke about the priorities of the Council as well as his own experiences as a researcher and ERC grant winner.

NCN Recommendations on publications

Prof. Tomasz Dietl during NCN Open Days 2024 in Bydgoszcz, photo by Łukasz Bera Professor Tomasz Dietl is a physicist, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and Academia Europaea. In December 2024, the NCN Council elected him as its Chair. In the past, he has served as a member of the Scientific Council and the Steering Committee of the European Research Council (ERC). In 2008, he won an ERC Advanced Grant.

One of the topics of the interview was the NCN Council resolution of December 2024 concerning the dissemination of research results. The document encourages scholars to publish in prestigious journals and to avoid those that do not guarantee a fair review process. However, online comments on the resolution have raised questions about the interpretation of the recommendation. Does avoiding certain journals mean a total ban on publishing in them? How do you put those tips into practice when there is no clearly defined list of predatory magazines?

Professor Dietl addressed those questions, explaining why no decision was taken to create such a list. “The number of magazines is around 50 thousand. Five million articles are published each year. Making such a list would be difficult even technically, but I think it wouldn’t make sense because the landscape of science is dynamic. Certain magazines disappear, others appear, exploiting loopholes. (...) The intention of this resolution is to promote good practices. Not bans, not orders, just an indication of how well one should behave in a scientific environment,” says the Council Chair. He adds that publishing in journals with lower prestige in a particular field can significantly reduce the chances of winning funding at the NCN. “Therefore, researchers who are thinking ahead and planning for the long term should take this advice to heart and aim to publish in journals where leaders in their field publish,” he says.

The role of the NCN and new challenges

Professor Dietl also talked about the main directions of the NCN Council’s activities in the coming years. He identified three key priorities: integrity, fostering scientific excellence and deregulation.

“My dream is to convince the scientific community – and this is the direction the Council may be working towards – that project writing is a creative process that allows us to plan research, learn about the literature and establish new collaborations. Therefore, even if we do not receive funding as a result of our application, this time is not lost. It is an activity that allows us to organise our scientific work and mentally prepare ourselves to make new discoveries.” He adds that this is why the integrity of reviews is one of the main topics the Council is working on.

“The idea is that even proposals that did not receive funding should provide the authors with information on what was good, what needs improvement and what has already been discovered. (...) If applications are improved on the basis of reviews, there is a great chance that the project will be funded in the next call.”

In terms of project implementation, he noted the need for more freedom for scholars: “Let’s not place so much importance on filling the schedule. What is more important is what was discovered, how the findings were disseminated and the social significance of the research. These are the key questions we should be asking when evaluating a project.”

Mobility and international grants

The topic of European Research Council grants and the need to increase the participation of Polish scientists in international calls also came up in the interview. In many European countries, applying for an ERC grant is seen as an integral part of building a research career. “For example, you cannot apply for prestigious positions such as director of the Max Planck Institute if you do not apply for an ERC grant at the same time. This is the approach we should also promote in our environment, realising that this is a very difficult call, with huge competition. However, assuming reliable and valuable reviews are received, the time spent preparing the project will not have been wasted. They will help us find out what we did well, which of our proposals were interesting and which ideas proved to be secondary or unattractive," says Professor Dietl.

The podcast guest also emphasises the importance of building researchers’ recognition and mobility. “Intellectual and geographical mobility are key. (...) I’ve seen young scholars who had a great understanding of how the world of science works. They themselves knew where to publish, what conferences to go to, whom to talk to. However, such people are still too few in number. Travelling abroad, attending conferences and collaborating internationally is not only intellectually stimulating, but also crucial to winning an ERC grant.”

NCN – oxygen for science

At the end of the interview, Professor Dietl acknowledged that the NCN plays a special role in Polish science, supporting scholars at different stages of their careers. He also pointed out how much mobilisation of the scientific community was brought about as a result of a struggle to increase the NCN’s budget.

“The 30% increase in the NCN’s budget is a success, but remember, cumulative inflation has been 43% in recent years. We still face challenges – how to increase salaries, subsidise equipment and enable the best scholars to carry out more projects. These are not easy decisions and require extensive discussion.”

The interview is available on Spotify, Apple Podcast and on You Tube.