15 June 2023
The National Science Centre (the “NCN”) is launching the PRELUDIUM BIS 5 call for proposals addressed at institutions operating doctoral schools. The objective of the call is to support PhD student education in doctoral schools and fund research projects carried out by PhD students as part of their doctoral dissertations.
The project budget under PRELUDIUM BIS 5 may cover funds for research up to 300,000 PLN, doctoral scholarships and indirect costs. Research projects carried out over a period of 36 or 48 months will be funded under the call.
PRELUDIUM BIS 5 supports international mobility of PhD students through foreign fellowships carried out over a period of 3 to 6 months and funded by the National Agency for Academic Exchange (the “NAWA”).
The call budget is 25,000,000 PLN.
Proposals must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system at https://osf.opi.org.pl, pursuant to the proposal submission procedure.
The call for proposals in the OSF submission system is open until 15 September 2023, 4 p.m..
The call results will be announced by 15 February 2024 at the latest.
Please note: In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, pursuant to a Resolution adopted by the NCN, proposals submitted to the National Science Centre must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities. Where any such collaboration is planned, the proposals shall be rejected as ineligible.
Please read the call documents provided in this call text.
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- A PhD degree does not have to be obtained as a result of end of the project.
- The total number of NCN projects managed by a researcher and proposals submitted to the NCN and subject to evaluation or recommended for funding in which that researcher is named as the principal investigator, must not be more than two. The foregoing limit (see §8 and §9 of the Regulations for more information) shall not apply to the projects funded under, or proposals submitted to, for example, PRELUDIUM BIS.
Proposals in the call may be submitted by institutions operating doctoral schools laid down in Article 198 (3) and 198 (4) of the Act on Higher Education and Science of 20 July 2018 as well as institutions jointly operating doctoral schools pursuant to Article 198 (5) of the same Act, for which project funding will NOT constitute state aid. Entities under receivership, in liquidation or subject to bankruptcy proceedings must not apply.
A person who meets the requirements of a research supervisor laid down in Article 190 of the Act on Higher Education and Science on the end date of the call for proposals and is the research supervisor of the PhD student operating the project funded under PRELUDIUM BIS may act as the principal investigator in a project submitted to the call.
One cannot be a principal investigator in more than two research projects funded under PRELUDIUM BIS at the same time.
Proposals may be submitted to the call covering basic research in any of 26 NCN panels comprising three groups:
- HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences;
- ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering; and
- NZ – Life Sciences.
Under the call, funding may be requested for research projects to be carried out over the period of 36 months or 48 months.
The research team includes the principal investigator (PhD student’s research supervisor) and PhD student. Research projects under the PRELUDIUM BIS call will be carried out by PhD students selected in an open call conducted by a committee formed by the head of the host institution for the project acting as the applicant. The call is open to all those who are not PhD holders and are not doctoral school students.
Projects submitted to PRELUDIUM BIS 5 must be carried out by PhD students as part of their doctoral dissertations.
Please note: A one-off change of a PhD student in the PRELUDIUM BIS project is allowed, provided that:
- he/she be elected in a call conducted by the end of the first year of project performance according to the above terms,
- the host institution ensure payment of the PRELUDIUM BIS doctoral scholarship for the entire period of PhD student’s education, in the amount and on terms and conditions laid down in the Regulations.
The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research and must be based on realistic calculations.
The project budget includes direct costs and indirect costs.
Direct costs include:
- scholarships for PhD students: 5,000 PLN per month (up to the month of the mid-term evaluation of PhD students at the doctoral school), 6,000 PLN (after the month of the mid-term evaluation of PhD students at the doctoral school);
PhD students receiving PRELUDIUM BIS doctoral scholarships must not receive scholarship support or other remuneration granted under the heading of direct costs from other NCN-funded research projects, with the exception of principal investigator’s salary under PRELUDIUM.
- funding for the principal investigator: up to 40,000 PLN for the project performance period (this amount may be designated for principal investigator’s salary and other project costs);
- materials and small equipment;
- outsourcing;
- business trips, visits and consultations;
- compensation for collective investigators, and
- other costs crucial to the project which comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the NCN.
Funding for research under PRELUDIUM BIS must not exceed 300,000 PLN (including 40,000 PLN for the principal investigator). Furthermore, the project budget includes the cost of scholarships for PhD students and indirect costs.
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.
During the project implementation, the host institution must agree with the principal investigator the coverage of at least 25% of the indirect costs.
Funds for the purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices and software must not be planned in the project.
The mandatory foreign fellowship will be funded by the NAWA. PhD students funded under PRELUDIUM BIS 5 will have to submit foreign fellowship funding proposals to the NAWA no later than 6 months before the fellowship. For more information on the terms of foreign fellowship funding, go to Annex to the Cooperation Agreement between the NCN and the NAWA.
Please note: The costs of publication of monographs resulting from research projects (as defined in §10 of the Regulation on the Evaluation of the Quality of Research Activity issued by the Minister of Science and Higher Education on 22 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 392) may be incurred following a positive review by the NCN.
When drafting the budget, one must comply with the rules concerning project costs, including costs of salaries and scholarships laid down in the Types of costs in research projects funded by the NCN.
If unjustified costs are planned, a proposal may be rejected.
Together with other European research-funding institutions, the National Science Centre is a member of cOAlition S. Therefore, the NCN has adopted an Open Access Policy pursuant to which all research results stemming from NCN-funded research projects must be made available in immediate open access. The policy does not cover monographs, monograph chapters or peer-reviewed collected works.
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), as long as the Version of Record (VoR) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is published, by the author or publisher, in an open repository immediately upon the article’s online publication;
- publication in transformative journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of so-called transformative agreements, inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry).
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 can be found here, as amended.
For more information, read the Open Access Instructions.
Entities for which funding would constitute state aid must not participate in the PRELUDIUM BIS 5 call.
Proposals are subject to an eligibility check and merit-based evaluation. Eligibility check is carried out by the Scientific Coordinators. Only complete proposals that meet all requirements of the call text can be recommended for merit-based evaluation.
Proposals submitted to PRELUDIUM BIS are evaluated by the inter-panel teams (consisting of experts from respective panels, i.e., HZ, ST or NZ).
In the case of interdisciplinary proposals which are 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 team may decide to seek another review from a member of another Expert Team.
Experts are selected by the NCN Council from among eminent Polish and foreign researchers who are at least PhD holders. Expert teams are established for each call edition. The composition of the Expert Team is subject to the number and subjects of proposals submitted to each panel.
Proposals approved as eligible are subject to a SINGLE-STAGE merit-based evaluation.
The merit-based evaluation is be performed by the Expert Team set up by the NCN, based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto. Each proposal is evaluated by THREE members of the Expert Team acting independently. Proposals which are assigned at least one auxiliary review panel indicating disciplines from another NCN panels than the one to which they are submitted may be identified by the Chair of the Expert Team as requiring an additional individual review by a member of another the Expert Team (interdisciplinary proposals).
Then, based on the discussions of individual reviews, a ranking list of proposals recommended for funding is drafted by the Expert Team at the meeting.
Additional information on the proposal evaluation procedure can be found in the Proposal evaluation procedure for the Expert Teams.
The evaluation of proposals focuses, in particular, on:
- compliance with the basic research criteria;
- quality and innovative nature of the research or tasks to be performed;
- impact of the research project on the advancement of the scientific discipline;
- assessment of the feasibility of the research;
- scientific achievements of the principal investigator, including publications in renowned academic press/journals;
- assessment of the results of other research projects conducted by the principal investigator, funded by the NCN or from other sources;
- relevance of the costs to be incurred with regards to the subject and scope of the research and
- preparation of the proposal and compliance with other requirements set forth in the call text.
Proposals with a zero score or “no” decision agreed by the Expert Team in any reviewed criterion must not be recommended for funding. The foregoing does not apply to the data management evaluation criteria and evaluation criteria of ethics issues in research.
The proposal evaluation criteria are available here.
Proposals are evaluated by inter-panel teams (consisting of experts from respective panels, i.e., HZ, ST or NZ). Experts are selected by the NCN Council from among outstanding Polish and foreign researchers, holding at least a PhD degree. Expert Teams are established for each call edition. The composition of the Expert Team is subject to the number and subjects of proposals submitted to each panel.
The call results will be published on the NCN’s website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision by the NCN Director within 5 months of the proposal submission deadline, by the 15 of February 2024 at the latest.
For more information on the call, read the Information for Applicants on the NCN website.
Should you have any more questions or queries, please contact us by e-mail at: informacja@ncn.gov.pl or telephone:
If you are intending to submit a proposal to PRELUDIUM BIS 5 call, you should:
- read all call documents included in the call text, in particular:
- collect data from the host institution for the project that is required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal and project performance (project costs, procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal), and
- prepare letters of acceptance from publishers confirming that the paper has been accepted for publication (when the academic and research track record section includes papers accepted for publication but not published yet).
Before the proposal is submitted to the NCN:
- check if all information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Verification of the proposal for completeness in the OSF submission system by pressing the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button does not guarantee that information has been entered correctly and that the required annexes have been attached;
- make sure that all tabs are completed in the correct language;
- disable editing of the final version of the proposal to NCN
- download the confirmation of proposal submission that needs to be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the institution, and
- attach the confirmation of submitting the proposal with a signature.
Once the proposal is completed and all required annexes are attached, use the Wyślij do NCN [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 delivered,
- if the proposal is recommended for funding, a 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 delivery of the decision.
Light pollution is a term that refers to all the negative effects of excessive night-time exposure to light on people and the environment. Written by the Polish researcher together with her European and US collaborators, the article was published in a special section of the journal devoted to the impact of artificial light pollution, as well as associated measurements and legal regulations.
The most important changes to PRELUDIUM BIS 5 
Who may apply for funding?
Who may act as the principal investigator?
Are there any restrictions on submitting proposals for research projects under NCN calls?
What are the topics covered by the call?
What is the project duration period?
Are there any restrictions on the size of the research team?
How should the project budget be planned?
Open access publication of research results
Can proposals in this call include an application for state aid? 
What is the proposal evaluation procedure?
What is reviewed in the evaluation of proposals?
Who performs the merit-based evaluation of proposals?
When and how will the results be announced?
More information