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Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays and best wishes for a wonderful New Year! Management, Council and employees of the National Science Centre

NCN budget on the agenda of the Sejm

The Sejm is working on the draft 2024 budget bill. During a debate on 21 December, Andrzej Domański, Minister of Finance, declared that the new state budget will include resources for the “important purpose” of increasing the budget of the National Science Centre.

The declaration was made during a debate held at the first reading of the 2024 budget bill. In accordance with the legislative procedure, two more readings, where motions and amendments may be filed, are to be held in the Sejm, after which the draft bill will be passed on to the Senate, and then, depending on the Senate’s decision, submitted for signing to the President or returned to the Sejm once again with suggested amendments.

The research-funding budget of the NCN has remained unchanged for the past two years and falls significantly short of the needs and expectations of the research community. In recently concluded calls, the success rate hit an all-time low, falling to 8% in the flagship OPUS call, which means that many outstanding Polish researchers did not receive funding for their very good research projects only because of the lack of funds.

The research community has long supported the NCN in its campaign to get its budget increased. Winners of scholarships awarded by the Ministry of Education and Science issued an appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Science and Higher Education to review the resources slated for the mission of the NCN as the flagship institution that ensures politically independent and merit-based research funding. You can also still sign the a ppeal of scientists for the betterment of science in Poland, which emphasises that, in light of the budget of Poland, it is not only necessary but also quite realistic to restore the status quo ante, where the National Science Centre was able to fund 25-30% of projects submitted under its calls. In recent months, support for the NCN was also voiced by the winners of ERC grants, awards and fellowships of the Foundation for Polish Science, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme.

Thank you for all your support thus far.

More about the NCN budget

2023 and what next? An interview with the President of the NCN Council

“The core of our mission is to fund top basic research. This is so little and yet so much…It would be good if politicians finally recognised the importance of the NCN in the research-funding system”, says Prof. Robert Hasterok, President of the NCN Council, in an interview published by “Forum Akademickie”. Hasterok takes stock of the past 12 months and talks about the future plans of the Council.

Prof. Robert Hasterok, photo by Martyna Mazur Prof. Hasterok was appointed as the President of the NCN Council in December 2022. The first year of his term has also been a period of particularly heated debate on research funding in Poland. The precarious political and budgetary situation of the National Science Centre has long had a negative impact on the research landscape of the country. In this context, 2023 was truly exceptional, in the negative sense of the word: the Ministry of Education and Science explicitly signalled its intention to shut down the NCN. Due to the institution’s frozen budget, the success rate in its recently concluded calls dropped to an all-time low: 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 submitted projects.

“The political pressures on the NCN were, frankly, unprecedented and I hope this will never happen again in the future. One of the most important values we stand by is independence. And I must say that out of all the state-run grant agencies in Poland, we are the only one to have remained independent until the end”, emphasises Prof. Hasterok, and then adds it was only possible thanks to the unprecedented level of backing and support the NCN received from the community. He declares that the NCN Director and Council are hoping to be able to hold a meeting with the minister of science as soon as possible to present the current situation in basic research funding in Poland and persuade him to increase the budget of the NCN. “Or else, not long from now, we will see its complete collapse”, he warns.

In the interview, the President also addresses the question of whether the NCN Council has been making any special provisions for a scenario in which the NCN budget is not increased in 2024. Is it planning to pause some calls or restrict grant applications? “We regularly review our call portfolio to make sure everything works fine and matches the demands of the community. For now, there are no plans to pause any calls for lack of funds”, he emphasises.

Prof. Hasterok also reports on the work of the NCN Council in the past year. “In the first months, we worked under very difficult conditions, but now, after a year, I can say with confidence that the two halves of the Council (i.e. the new and the old members) have managed to sort out their differences. This is reflected not just in the fact that we have already passed 117 resolutions this year, but also that we are now calmer and more solution-oriented. I think that the next year, before the composition of the Council changes again, should be easier, and I am even tempted to say it might be more creative than the first”, he stresses.

When asked about the issues that the NCN and the Council will need to face in 2024, he talks about freedom from political pressure and motivation. “We must prioritise funding research excellence”, he emphasises. The plan is to further develop the NCN’s call portfolio in communication with the research community, which should be possible thanks to a bigger budget. Some of the new plans the Council is working on include a MINIATURA mentoring initiative and new Polish-American cooperation programmes.

The full text of the interview by Mariusz Karwowski can be found on the website of “Forum Akademickie”.

The need to increase the NCN budget was also recently addressed by Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director, in an interview published by “Forum Akademickie”, and on the NCN podcast.

Polish-German-Walloon research funded under Weave-UNISONO

Dr hab. Paulina Pospieszna from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań and Dr hab. Piotr Micek from the Jagiellonian University will work on a trilateral international research projects thanks to a Weave-UNISONO grant.

Researchers from Poland, Belgium-Wallonia and Germany will work on a project entitled Integrating Public Deliberation for Impact: Learning from the European Wave of Citizens’ Assemblies. They will look into the function of citizens’ assemblies, or processes where a group of citizens is selected by lottery to deliberate on different political issues and work out recommendations for decision-making at local and national levels. The team aims to investigate how such panels may influence institutions and political processes, with a special focus on how they are designed and integrated with the political system. During the project, several dozen citizens’ panels will be compared. The project will be conducted by Dr hab. Paulina Pospieszna from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, in cooperation with Prof. Jean Benoit Pilet from the Belgian Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Prof. Brigitte Geißel and Dr. Rikki Dean from the Goethe University Frankfurt. The Polish team will get more than 1.1 million zlotys for its part of the three-year project.

The other tripartite project recommended for funding concerns graph theory, a research field which is the mathematics of networks. The project will be carried out by a research team headed by Dr hab. Piotr Micek from the Jagiellonian University. Researchers will study planar graphs, the graphs that can be drawn in the plane without edge crossings. They will develop their theorem from 2019, the so-called “product structure theorem”, building a theory around it and looking for new applications. Research will be carried out in collaboration with Prof. Gwenaël Joret from the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Prof. Torsten Ueckerd from the German Karlsruher Institut für Technologie. The Polish research team has been awarded over 900 thousand zlotys.

The proposal were evaluated by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in its capacity as the lead agency under the Lead Agency Procedure, and the results were approved by the NCN and the Walloon agency, F.R.S.-FNRS (Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS).

Weave-UNISONO

The Weave-UNISONO call is the result of multilateral cooperation between research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures for research proposals that bring together researchers from two or three different European countries in any discipline of science.

The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for merit-based review and the others simply accept the result.

Under Weave, partner research teams apply in parallel to the lead agency and their relevant domestic institutions. Their joint proposal must include coherent research programmes and clearly spell out the added value of international cooperation.

The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to carefully read the call text and submit their funding proposals.

Ranking list

Weave-UNISONO announcement

Updated on 22 December 2023

MEiN scholarship winners weigh in on the situation in Polish science

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.

Full text of the letter

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.

More about the budget

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”.

NCN 2024 call timeline now available

We present a preliminary timeline for calls operated by the National Science Centre in the year 2024.

The call timeline does not include multilateral calls launched by the international networks of research funding agencies, including the NCN, which are announced and pre-announced on the NCN website all year round according to the decisions of the participating agencies.

2024 call timeline

TYPE OF CALL	CALL ANNOUNCEMENT	CALL DEADLINE	CALL RESULTS
WEAVE-UNISONO	continous call, in line with partner agencies call timelines		depend on the time of publishing results by partner agencies
IMPRESS-U	call open until 31 December 2025, may be suspended earlier if the total amount of funds set by any partner institution has been depleted		within 12 months of the NCN proposal submission date
MINIATURA 8	continuous call, open from 1 February to 31 July 2024
OPUS 27 PRELUDIUM 23	15 March	17 June	December 2024
SONATA BIS 14 MAESTRO 16	17 June	17 September	March 2025
OPUS 28 + LAP Weave SONATA 20	16 September	16 December	OPUS 28, SONATA 20 – June 2025 Weave – depends on the time of accepting evaluation results by partner agencies, November 2025 at latest
SONATINA 9	16 December	17 March 2025	September 2025

Download the NCN 2024 Call timeline

Polish researchers’ success in the QuantERA Call 2023

8 out of 24 projects selected for funding in the QuantERA call for transnational research projects in Quantum Science and Technologies, will be implemented together with the Polish teams. Polish researchers will investigate a number of fascinating subjects, such as advanced data encryption methods using quantum cryptography, information processing, metrology and biomedical imaging technologies, and revolutionary potential of quantum computers.

The fourth edition of the QuantERA call was announced in January 2023 by 35 research funding organisations from 28 countries and received enthusiastic response from the scientific community. 24 out of 101 submitted proposals (56 in the Quantum Phenomena and Resources topic and 45 in the area of Applied Quantum Science), were recommended for funding. A group of successful projects involving Polish scientists includes 4 consortia with Polish coordinators. 5 projects will be funded by the National Science Centre (basic research), and 3 projects by the National Centre for Research and Development (applied research).

List of the projects with the participation of Polish research teams

AQuSeND – Advanced Quantum Sensing with NanoDiamonds,
Polish Project Coordinator: Dr Adam Wojciechowski, Jagiellonian University. Research team comprising researchers from Germany, Poland and Spain
FiGAnti – Fibre-Coupled GaSb Quantum Dot Tunable Single-Photon Sources for Field Deployed Quantum Key Distribution,
Polish Project Coordinator: Dr Anna Musiał, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. Research team comprising researchers from Finland, France, Germany, Poland and Sweden
QuCABOoSE – Quantum Coherence Activation By Open Systems and Environments,
Polish Principal Investigator: Dr Jarosław Korbicz, Center for Theoretical Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences. Research team comprising researchers from Czechia, Italy, Germany and Poland
ResourceQ – Unifying and Optimising Resources for Quantum Computation,
Polish Project Coordinator: Dr John Selby, University of Gdansk. Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany and Poland
TouQan – Towards a useful quantum advantage,
Polish Principal Invesigator: Dr Michał Oszmaniec, NASK. Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany, Poland and Spain
EXTRASENS – Color centers in diamond nanoneedles for intra- and EXTRA-cellular quantum SENSing (funded by NCBR),
Polish Principal Investgator: Dr Radek Łapkiewicz, University of Warsaw. Research team comprising researchers from Czechia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania and Poland
MEEDGARD – Memory-Enhanced Entanglement Distribution with Gallium ARsenide quantum Dots (funded by NCBR),
Polish Principal Investigator: Dr Michał Gawełczyk, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. Research team comprising researchers from Austria, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom
QM3 – Quantum Multi-Modal Microscopy (funded by NCBR),
Polish Project Coordinator: Dr Radek Łapkiewicz, University of Warsaw. Research team comprising researchers from France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland

For more information, including a full list of projects recommended for funding, please visit the quantera.eu website.

The QuantERA Programme is coordinated by the National Science Centre, Poland. Contact

List of all projects qualified for funding in the call

Call Announcement

More about QuantERA calls

Winter intake of proposals in NCN calls now open!

The SONATINA 8 and DAINA 3 calls are now open. It is an opportunity for new PhDs and researchers planning projects with Lithuanian partners to get their share of funding from a total budget of 36 million zlotys.

In the winter iteration of NCN calls, researchers who wish to work in Poland are once again invited to vie for funding for basic research, understood as empirical or theoretical studies undertaken to gain new knowledge of the foundations of phenomena and observable facts, without any direct commercial use. Under SONATINA, the projects might also address applied research.

Proposals will be accepted for three months, until March 2024. 20 million zlotys are up for grabs under SONATINA and a further 16 million under DAINA.

SONATINA for “young” researchers

The 8th SONATINA call is targeted at young researchers. Importantly, the term “young” here applies not so much to their chronological age as to their career level. The PI must hold a PhD degree, awarded between 1 January 2021 and the date of submission, or commit to earning the degree by the end of June 2024.

SONATINA supports the careers of young researchers, enabling them to secure full-time employment contracts and conduct scientific research at Polish host institutions. Winners of the call also get an opportunity to gain new knowledge and valuable experience during 3- to 6-month fellowships at high-quality foreign research centres. The SONATINA grant cannot be managed by a person who has earned their PhD at the host institution.

SONATINA projects can be planned over 24 or 36 months. Apart from the full-time salary for the PI and the costs of the mandatory foreign fellowship, the budget may also make provisions for additional remuneration for project team members, the costs of materials and small equipment, outsourced services, business trips, visits and consultations, as well as compensation for collective investigators under the project. The budget may not include the costs of research equipment, devices or software, or full-time salaries and scholarships for other team members.

At the NCN, we really invest in young people. Every year, more than 50% of our resources go toward supporting their careers, both through calls, where they need to compete against more experienced colleagues, and through scholarships, fellowships and post-doc funding. NCN calls, such as the recently launched SONATINA 8, give young researchers financial stability and a chance to gain research independence.

Funding young researchers through NCN calls (pdf)

Polish-Lithuanian cooperation under DAINA

In the 3rd DAINA call, the NCN resumes its successful cooperation with the Lithuanian Research Council (RCL). The call is open to Polish researchers planning to conduct research in tandem with Lithuanian partners. The PI of the Polish team must hold at least a PhD degree and their research record, depending on the discipline, must include at least one paper published or accepted for publication or at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art.

DAINA projects can be planned over 36 months. The maximum budget for the Polish part of the project is 1 million zlotys and may include full-time salaries for the PI and the research team (including post-docs), scholarship for students and PhD students, research equipment, as well as other costs crucial to the project.

In the last two iterations of the DAINA call, 27 projects received a total of 26.5 million zlotys in funding. The research problems covered by these successful teams can be consulted in the NCN’s project database.

Proposal and then what?

Proposals under the SONATINA and DAINA calls can be submitted by representatives of the host institution or by natural persons. Proposals should be drafted and submitted via the OSF submission system. The deadline ends on 15 March 2024 at 4 pm CET. The OSF system forms will be launched on 18 December.

The merit-based evaluation consists of two stages. Proposals are evaluated by inter-panel expert teams appointed for the given call, as well as by independent external experts. The experts are selected by the NCN Council from among outstanding researchers, Polish and international, with at least a PhD degree, based on the criterion of scientific excellence and no conflict of interest. The composition of the team is only decided after submissions close so as to best reflect the number and subjects of submitted proposals. For DAINA, the team is appointed jointly by the NCN and the RCL.

The peer-review process at the NCN conforms to the highest international standards. At stage 1, each proposal is evaluated by at least two expert team members and later discussed by the team as a whole; the team then decides whether to pass it on to stage 2 or reject it. At stage 2, the proposal is evaluated by at least two external experts; under SONATINA, the PI of the project is also interviewed. The final scores, as well as the ranking list of projects recommended for funding, are decided by the expert team in a debate during the second panel meeting.

Results will be announced by the end of September 2024 for SONATINA and by the end of November 2024 for DAINA.

SONATINA 8 announcement

DAINA 3 announcement

A chance for a new opening

“We wish for a new opening in our relationship and hope that the new authorities will soon take quick and effective measures to support the National Science Centre in its mission to boost the quality and effectiveness of Polish research and improve the standing of Polish science in the world”, Professors Robert Hasterok and Krzysztof Jóźwiak write in a letter to Dariusz Wieczorek, Minister of Science.

The NCN Director and the President of the NCN Council hope they will soon be able to meet the new minister to discuss their “comprehensive, constructive and creative cooperation for the sake of science”.

“The National Science Centre is one of very few central public institutions that have managed to resist political pressure in recent years, despite repeated attacks against its independence”, they point out.

The Polish and international research community has spoken out in defence of the NCN. Its defenders included winners of grants, scholarships, and awards from institutions such as the European Research Council (ERC), the Foundation for Polish Science, and L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science. “Thanks to the resolve and staunch support of the scientific community, as well as the will of Polish voters, as expressed in the parliamentary elections of 15 October, the independence of the National Science Centre has been preserved. However, due to the policies of the previous government, its financial situation is now critical ”, the letter reads. The authors point out that this makes the NCN unable to “fund even some of the best research projects submitted by the most active and ambitious of Polish researchers”.

The subsidy that the NCN currently receives from the state budget completely fails to address the needs of the Polish research community. Due to its frozen budget, the NCN was only able to award funding to 8% of the projects submitted under the recently concluded OPUS 25 call . This is the lowest success rate in the entire history of the NCN. For many months, its appeals to the previous authorities to increase funding had fallen on deaf ears.

The letter to the minister was sent on 14 December.

More information about the NCN budget

10th episode of the NCN podcast

We also talk about the need for a new opening in our relationship with the ministry of science, the benefits of basic research funding and the top challenges faced by the NCN in the latest episode of our podcast.

Our guest is Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, who is interviewed by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz. The episode is available through the most important streaming services, such as Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.

SONATINA 8

Read more about SONATINA 8

15 December 2023

The National Science Centre (NCN) is launching the SONATINA 8 call for research projects. The objective of the call is to support the career development of early-stage researchers by creating opportunities for full-time employment and research in Poland and enabling them to gain knowledge and experience during fellowships in first-rate foreign research institutions.

The call is addressed at individuals who have been granted their PhD degree in the proposal submission year or within 3 years prior to the proposal submission year (between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2023) or will be granted their PhD by 30 June 2024. The 3-year period may be extended by the career breaks laid down in the Resolution.

Employment under a full-time employment contract must be planned for the principal investigator in the host institution for the project other than the one from which the principal investigator has earned a PhD degree. The principal investigator must complete a foreign fellowship of 3 to 6 months in a foreign research institution.

The Council of the National Science Centre has allocated PLN 20,000,000 for research projects to be carried out under the SONATINA 8 call for proposals.

Proposals must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system available at: https://osf.opi.org.pl pursuant to the proposal submission procedure.

The call for proposals in the OSF submission system closes on 15 March 2024, 4 p.m. CET.

Please read the call documents provided in this call text.

Please note: As of the calls launched on 15 December 2023, project literature SHALL NOT count towards the page limit in the short and full project descriptions.

Please note: Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NCN Council has decided that proposals submitted to NCN calls must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities. Proposals providing for such collaboration shall be rejected as ineligible.

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Who is eligible to apply?

Proposals for funding of a research project under SONATINA 8 may be submitted by entities laid down in the Act on the National Science Centre (“NCN”), hereinafter referred to as the “applicants”, for which project funding does not constitute state aid, i.e.:

universities,
federations of science and HE entities,
research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences operating pursuant to the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1796, as amended),
research institutes operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1383, as amended),
international research institutes established pursuant to other acts and acting in the Republic of Poland,

5a. Łukasiewicz Centre operating pursuant to the Act on the Łukasiewicz Research Network of 21 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 2098),

5b. institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network,

Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences,
other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis,
groups of entities (at least two entities mentioned in sections 1-7 or at least one institution as such together with at least one company),
scientific and industrial centres laid down in the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, items 1383, as amended),
research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences laid down in the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1796),
scientific libraries,
companies operating as R&D centres within the meaning of the Act on Certain Forms of Support for Innovative Activity of 30 May 2008 (Journal of Laws of 2021, item 706),
legal entities with registered office in Poland,

13a. President of the Central Office of Measures, and

natural persons.

Who can act as the principal investigator?

Principal investigators must be individuals who meet both of the following conditions:

have earned a PhD degree in the proposal submission year or within 3 years prior to the proposal submission year (between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2023) or will earn a PhD degree by 30 June 2024. The 3-year period may be extended by the career breaks laid down in the Resolution

will be employed in the research project pursuant to a full-time employment contract, on terms and conditions laid down in the Regulations, for the research project performance period. They must be employed by another institution than the one from which they have earned their PhD degree.

Are there any restrictions on submitting proposals?

Restrictions on submitting proposals are described in Chapter III of the Regulations.

One can act as the principal investigator under a SONATINA call only once.

What are the subjects covered by the call?

The project must cover either basic research or applied research.

Proposals may be submitted to the call in any of 26 NCN review panels, within three areas:

HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences;
ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering;
NZ – Life Sciences.

What is the project duration?

Research projects may be planned for a period of either 24 or 36 months.

What is the foreign fellowship duration?

Foreign fellowships may last between 3 to 6 months.

How should the project budget be planned?

The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research and based on realistic calculations. No maximum or minimum amount of the project budget has been set for SONATINA 8. If an unjustified budget is planned, the proposal may be rejected.

The project budget includes direct costs and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

remuneration for the principal investigator,
cost of principal investigator’s mandatory foreign fellowship,
remuneration for co-investigators in the project, the so-called additional remuneration,
purchase of materials and small equipment,
outsourced services,
business trips, visits and consultations (applies to costs other than obligatory foreign fellowship) ,
compensation for collective investigators and
other costs crucial to the research project which comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre.

The project budget must not include the funds for the purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices or software.

Please note: The costs of publication of monographs (as defined in §10 of the Regulation on Evaluation of the Quality of Research Activity passed by the Minister of Science and Higher Education on 22 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 392) resulting from research projects may only be incurred following a positive review by the NCN.

Indirect costs include:

indirect cost of Open Access (up to 2% of direct costs) that may be designated only for the cost of open access to publications or research data;
other indirect costs (up to 20% of direct costs) that may be spent on costs that are related indirectly to the research project, including the cost of open access to publications and research data.
The institution must arrange with the principal investigator for the distribution of at least 25 per cent of funds arising from the other indirect costs actually incurred in the project.

Under SONATINA 8, funds must be planned for:

employment of the principal investigator pursuant to a full-time employment contract for the research project performance period, in accordance with the Regulations;
research projects, in accordance with the budget laid down in the proposal; and
principal investigator’s foreign fellowship at the foreign research institution of his choice, covering:

a) flat-rate funds to cover the applicant’s living expenses at a foreign research institution hosting the fellowship, multiplied by the percentage correction rate set for a given country:

PLN 12,000 per each month of the fellowship,
PLN 3,000 per each month of stay at the fellowship location:

(i) of a minor child of the principal investigator or under legal guardianship of the principal investigator or

(ii) of the guardian of the principal investigator if the principal investigator is a holder of a certificate of severe or moderate disability,

b) flat-rate funds to cover the return travel expenses:

PLN 1,000 to PLN 10,000, depending on the distance between the participating entity and the research institution hosting the fellowship.

Please note that only the principal investigator may be employed with remuneration paid from the pool allocated for full-time salaries. Full-time salaries for post-docs, senior researchers and special auxiliary post holders must not be planned under SONATINA.

NCN scholarships and doctoral scholarships must not be planned under SONATINA.

Additional remuneration can be used to cover salaries for students and PhD students.

Please note: The cost of open access to publications subject to the NCN’s Open Access Policy must not be planned as direct costs.

Can proposals in this call include application for state aid?

State aid cannot be applied for under the call. For more information, please refer to the State Aid section.

What should be included in a proposal?

Required information and annexes are laid down in §6 of the Annex to Resolution No 104/2023 of 9 November 2023.

The proposal form is available here.

Please note: As of the calls launched on 15 December 2023, project literature SHALL NOT count towards the page limit in the short and full project descriptions.

What is the proposal evaluation procedure?

Proposals are subject to an eligibility check and merit-based evaluation.

The eligibility check is performed by the scientific coordinators. Only complete proposals that meet all the requirements set forth in the call text may be recommended for merit-based evaluation. Proposals may also be rejected as not eligible at the stage of merit-based evaluation.

The merit-based evaluation of proposals is performed in two stages.

Stage I: Proposals are evaluated by the Expert Team established by the NCN based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the full project description. First, each proposal is evaluated by two members of the Expert Team acting independently. In the case of a proposal which is assigned an auxiliary NCN review panel specifying disciplines covered by NCN review panels other than the one to which the proposal was submitted, the Chair of the Expert Team may decide to request another review from a member of another Expert Team (the so-called interdisciplinary proposals).

Then, at the first meeting, the Expert Team discusses all proposals and compiles a list of proposals approved for stage II of evaluation.

Stage II: Proposals are referred to at least two external reviewers who draft their individual reviews based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the short project description. When the reviews are delivered, the principal investigator is interviewed. The principal investigators in proposals recommended for stage II of merit-based evaluation will receive reviews of their proposals at least 7 days before the interview.

An interview with the principal investigator at stage II of merit-based evaluation is held in Polish or in English and is forecasted for July 2024. An exact time of the interview will be communicated to the principal investigator at least 14 days in advance.

Based on the individual reviews of Experts and Reviewers and Expert Team’s interview with the principal investigator, the Expert Team agrees on the final evaluation of the proposal and compiles a ranking list of proposals, specifying proposals recommended for funding.

To find out more on the proposal evaluation procedure, please read the Proposal evaluation procedure for the Expert Teams and the video tutorial.

What is reviewed in the evaluation of proposals?

The following criteria are reviewed in the evaluation of proposals:

compliance with the research criteria;
quality and innovative nature of research or tasks to be performed;
impact of the research project on the advancement of the scientific discipline;
assessment of feasibility of the research;
scientific achievements of the principal investigator, including publications in renowned academic press/ journals;
evaluation of the results other research projects conducted by the principal investigator previously funded by the NCN or from other sources;
relevance of the costs with regard to the subject and scope of the research;
relevance of the choice of the host institution for the foreign fellowship, including academic rank of a foreign research institution, accuracy of the choice of the research institution and impact on the development of the principal investigator’s scientific career; and
preparation of the proposal and compliance with other requirements set forth in the call text.

Proposals are evaluated pursuant to the proposal evaluation criteria applicable to SONATINA.

Who performs the merit-based evaluation of proposals?

Proposals are evaluated by inter-panel teams comprising experts appointed for particular research domains, i.e. HS, ST or NZ.

Experts are selected by the NCN Council from among outstanding Polish and foreign researchers who are at least PhD holders. Expert Teams are set up for each call edition. The composition of the Expert Team is subject to the number and subjects of proposals submitted to each panel.

When and how will the results be announced?

The call results will be published on the NCN website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision by the NCN Director within 6 months of the proposal submission date, by the end of September 2024.

Open access publication of research results

Together with other European cOAlition S agencies, the National Science Centre has drafted its Open Access Policy. In accordance with its vision of open access to research results and publications, the NCN requires that all research results should be made available in full and immediate open access. In accordance with the principles of Plan S, the National Science Centre recognizes the following publication routes as compliant with its open access policy:

publication in open access journals and on open access platforms registered, or with pending registration, in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ);
publication in subscription journals (hybrid journals in which some of the articles are open access and some require payment of a publication fee), as long as the Version of Record (VoR, i.e. a version of record published in a journal with its own typeface and branding. Other terms: published version or publisher’s pdf) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM, i.e. the final manuscript version created by the author, including all the revisions introduced after the peer review, and accepted for publication in the journal. Other terms: post print, author accepted manuscript) is published, by the author or publisher, in an open repository immediately upon the article’s online publication;
publication in journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of so-called transformative agreements that must be inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry) and in transformative journals (i.e. journals actively committed to transitioning from a subscription journal to a fully open access journal. The current list of transformative journals is available here). Transformative journals must meet the criteria laid down in the Guidelines on the Implementation of Plan S and must allow open access publication of original scientific articles.

Please note: This publication route applies to articles accepted for publication or published before 31 December 2024.

Manuscripts must be published using the CC-BY licence. In the case of transformative journals, the CC-BY-SA licence can also be used. The CC-BY-ND licence may also be used (regardless of the publication route selected).

More information on open access publication terms/instructions can be found here, as amended.

For more information, please read the Open Access Instructions.

In grant agreements concluded after 1 January 2021, the data underpinning the scientific publications resulting from the project funded by the NCN must be well-documented pursuant to the FAIR Principles standing for machine or manual Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability or Reusability (the so-called “FAIR Data”). Where possible, data must be made available in the repository, according to the Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 licence (that allows the distribution of data to public domain. Pursuant to the licence, authors can give up their intellectual property rights to the extend allowed by domestic law; the licence does not affect patent rights, rights of publicity or privacy). The data citation principles laid down in the Declaration of Data Citation Principles by FORCE 11 and the TOP Guidelines must be complied with. Metadata describing the data sets must be in line with the OpenAIRE.

Where can additional information be found?

Please read the Information for Applicants available on our website.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact us by e-mail (informacja@ncn.gov.pl).

Useful information

If you are intending to submit a proposal to SONATINA 8:

read the call documents included in the call text, in particular:

a) Resolution on the terms and conditions of the SONATINA call for proposals,

b) proposal form template where you can find out about information and annexes required to complete the electronic proposal form in the OSF submission system;

c) Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre as regards research projects;

read the proposal submission procedure;
decide how long the project should last: 24 or 36 months;
decide on the research institution to host the foreign fellowship and duration thereof: 3 to 6 months (full months);
obtain a document (in English) confirming approval by the mentor from the research institution hosting the fellowship according to the template in the OSF submission system (Consent to the fellowship);
draw up a document confirming that the principal investigator has earned a PhD degree and if the principal investigator is yet to earn a PhD degree, a declaration by the PhD supervisor or certificate by a competent institution of the forecasted PhD award date (by 30 June 2024);
obtain information from the host institution that is required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal submission and project performance (procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal);
draw up the following documents:

a) in Polish:

description for the general public (1 standard page, A4);
work plan including research tasks;
in the case of research projects carried out by a group of entities, a research project cooperation agreement;
administrative declarations by the principal investigator and the host institution for the project;

b) in English:

project’s abstract;
description for the general public (1 standard page, A4);
work plan including research tasks;
research project descriptions: short project description (up to 5 standard pages, A4) and full project description (up to 15 standard pages, A4), (Project literature does not count towards the page limit);
information on the research team, including information on the principal investigator, as required by the call text;
information on the foreign research institution hosting the fellowship and justification for choosing that institution (up to 2 standard pages, A4);
document confirming research institution’s consent to host the foreign fellowship of the principal investigator;
research project budget;
in the case of a research project carried out in cooperation with a foreign partner, information on international cooperation as well as description of benefits that may result from such international cooperation;
information on the data management plan concerning data generated or used in the course of a research project;
information on the ethical aspects of the project, including any consents, opinions, permits and/or approvals necessary to carry out the project in compliance with generally applicable laws and best practices;
in the case of research projects which include clinical trials with a medicinal product or a medical device, a detailed justification of the non-commercial nature of the trials;
in the case of research projects covering research performed or completed by the principal investigator, or with respect to which the principal investigator applies for funding under other NCN calls or from other sources, a description of similar research tasks with reasons justifying the need to have them funded under the project; and
in the case of research projects to be carried out in a host institution that does not receive any operating support for research, information on research carried out over the last 2 years, together with a list of publications and information on research equipment and other instruments crucial to research.

Before the proposal is submitted to the NCN, please:

check if information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Verification of the proposal for completeness in OSF by pressing the Check completeness button does not guarantee that information has been entered correctly and that the required annexes have been attached;
disable editing of the final version of the proposal to the NCN;
download and sign the confirmation of proposal submission in the call (signature of the principal investigator and authorised representative of the institution); and
attach the confirmation of proposal submission with a signature.

When the proposal is completed and all required annexes are attached, use the Send to NCN button to submit the proposal to the NCN electronically via the OSF submission system.

Upon the end of the call for proposals:

evaluation of proposals will be carried out;
after each stage of evaluation, the funding decision of the NCN Director will be served;
if the proposal is recommended for funding, a research project funding agreement will be entered into; and
the project will be carried out pursuant to the funding agreement.

In the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements, the applicant may appeal against the decision of the NCN Director with the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council. The appeal must be lodged within 14 days of the effective service of the decision.

Call documents

Documents to be read before submitting a proposal to the NCN:

Documents concerning evaluation of proposals:

Documents to be read before commencing the NCN-funded project:

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