Announcement of the PRELUDIUM 19 call for proposals

A person who is not a PhD holder on the proposal submission date may act as the principal investigator in a project submitted under the PRELUDIUM call for proposals. The subject of the project may, but does not have to, be connected with the subject of a PhD dissertation.

One can act as a principal investigator under the PRELUDIUM call for proposals only once.

Important notice: The principal investigator must reside in Poland for at least 50% of the project duration period. This period includes business trips necessary for the project, in particular involving fieldwork, participation in conferences and/or library and archive research.

Proposals in the call may be submitted by any entity specified in the Act on the National Science Centre (NCN), namely:

1. universities;
2. federations of science and HE entities;
3. 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 2018, item 1475);
4. research institutes operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2018, item 736);
5. international research institutes established pursuant to separate Acts, operating 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, item 534);

5b. institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network;

6. Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences;
7. other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis;
8. 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);
9. scientific and industrial centres within the meaning of the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2018, item 736);
10. research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences within the meaning of the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010;
11. scientific libraries;
12. 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 2018, item 141);
13. legal entities established with registered office in Poland;
14. natural persons; and
15. companies conducting research in another organisational form than laid down in sections 1-13.

Restrictions on submitting proposals are described detailed in Chapter III of the Regulations on awarding funding for the implementation of research tasks funded by the National Science Centre as regards research projects.

Proposals may be submitted to the call covering basic research in any of 25 NCN panels comprising three groups:

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

Proposals are reviewed within the panels (e.g. HS1, ST1, NZ1). The principal investigator selects the panel. If an incorrect panel is selected, proposals may be rejected.

The subject of the project may, but does not have to, be connected with the subject of a PhD dissertation.

Under the call, funding may be requested for research projects to be carried out over the period of:

• 12 months,
• 24 months or
• 36 months.

The research team includes:

1. principal investigator,
2. mentor, and
3. (optionally) co-investigator who is at most a PhD holder.

A proposal must include the description of qualifications and tasks of particular members of the research team whose relevance for the project will be reviewed by the expert team. The budget for remuneration is described in detail in the Types of costs in research projects funded by the NCN.

The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research and must be based on reasonable calculations.

The maximum funding cannot exceed:

1. PLN 70,000 for projects lasting 12 months;
2. PLN 140,000 for projects lasting 24 months; and
3. PLN 210,000 for projects lasting 36 months.

The project budget includes direct costs and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

1. remuneration of up to PLN 1,500 per month for the research team, i.e. principal investigator and (optionally) co-investigator;
2. purchase or construction of research equipment, devices and software: the costs of research equipment, devices and software to be purchased or constructed cannot exceed 30% of the funds applied for in the research project;
3. purchase of materials and small equipment;
4. outsourced services;
5. business trips, visits and consultations;
6. compensation for collective investigators; and
7. other costs crucial to the project which comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the NCN.

A mentor cannot be a beneficiary of funding for the project submitted to the PRELUDIUM call for proposal in any form whatsoever.

PLEASE NOTE:

The costs of publication of monographs resulting from research projects (as defined in §10 of the Regulation on 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 only be incurred following a positive review by the NCN.

Indirect costs may be a maximum of 20% of direct costs. As of the previous edition of the call, the indirect costs are calculated on all direct costs, including research equipment, devices and software. During the project implementation, the host institution must agree with the principal investigator the coverage of at least 25% of the indirect costs.

If unjustified costs are planned, a proposal may be rejected.

Detailed information on costs in NCN-funded research projects  

Information to be provided in the proposal:

PLEASE NOTE: The following information must be provided in English:

1. details of the principal investigator, including information on his/her academic and research career and research experience as well as 1-10 papers published in the proposal submission year and over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year (including applicable breaks); for research in art, 1-10 most important papers published or artistic achievements and achievements in research in art in the proposal submission year and over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year;
2. details of the mentor, including information on his/her academic and research career and research experience as well as 1-10 papers published over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year (including applicable breaks); for research in art, 1-10 most important papers published or accepted for publication or artistic achievements and achievements in research in art in the proposal submission year and over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year;
3. basic information on the proposal and host institution for the project (also in Polish);
4. work plan (also in Polish);
5. information on the scope of work carried out by the co-investigators in the project;
6. summary of the project;
7. abstract for the general public (also in Polish);
8. short project description with bibliography (no more than 5 pages, A4);
9. full project description with bibliography (no more than 15 pages, A4);
10. information on ethical issues in the research planned;
11. data management plan (DMP) concerning data generated or used in the course of a research project; and
12. project budget.

PROPOSAL FORM

Proposals in the PRELUDIUM call include application for state aid, except where a natural person applies for funding. Detailed information can be found in the State aid section.

PLEASE NOTE: All documents concerning proposals for state aid must be signed with a qualified electronic signature in the PAdES format.

Eligibility checks are carried out by the coordinators. Only complete proposals that comply with all the requirements set out in the call announcement can be accepted for merit-based evaluation.

Proposals approved in the eligibility check are subject to merit-based evaluation performed in two stages:

1. qualification check performed by the expert team appointed by the NCN, based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the full project description;

Each proposal is evaluated by two members of the expert team acting independently. Then, based on the discussions, a list of proposals recommended for the second stage of evaluation is drafted by the expert team at the first meeting.

2. specialist evaluation of proposals recommended for the second stage of evaluation. Proposals are addressed to at least two external reviewers and evaluated thereby based on the data included in the proposal and annexes thereto, with the exception of the short project description.

Based on the reviews drafted by the external reviewers, a ranking list of proposals recommended for funding is drafted by the expert team at the second meeting.

Additional information on the proposal evaluation procedure can be found in the Detailed procedure according to which proposals are evaluated by the expert teams.

In the evaluation of proposals, the following criteria are reviewed:

1. compliance with the basic research criterion laid down in Article 2 (1) of the NCN Act;
2. scientific excellence of the project;
3. academic and research track record of the principal investigator and mentor;
4. feasibility of the project; and
5. relevance of the costs planned.

Detailed information on the proposal evaluation criteria

Merit-based evaluation of proposals is performed by the expert team. 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 depends on the number and subjects of proposals submitted to a panel. At the stage of specialist evaluation, proposals recommended for the second stage are evaluated by external reviewers selected by the coordinators from among the candidates recommended by the expert team.

The call results will be announced on the NCN’s website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision by the NCN Director within 6 months of the proposal submission deadline, by December 2020 at the latest.

Please read the Information for applicants available on the NCN's website.

Should you have any more queries, please contact us by email: informacja@ncn.gov.pl or by phone: +48 12 341 90 00.

If you plan to submit a proposal in the PRELUDIUM 19 call:

1. read all call documents included in the call announcement, in particular:
   1. terms of the PRELUDIUM call;
   2. proposal form template, where you can find out about information and annexes needed to complete the electronic proposal form in ZSUN/OSF;
   3. Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded by the National Science Centre;
   4. proposal submission procedure;
2. obtain 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 (cost planned in the project, procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal);
3. when the proposal is submitted by a group of entities, draw up an Agreement on collaboration for the purposes of completion of the requested research project;
4. prepare acceptance letters from publishers confirming that the work has been accepted for publication (when the publication track record section includes research papers accepted for publication that have not been published yet); and
5. have the mentor sign the declaration confirming that the project description has been read and consent to supervise the project.

Before the proposal is submitted to the NCN:

1. make sure that all information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Please note that the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button in ZSUN/OSF allows you to find out whether or not all sections of the proposal have been completed but does not provide a guarantee that all information entered is correct and the required annexes have been attached;
2. make sure that all tabs have been completed in the correct language;
3. disable the final version of the proposal to the NCN;
4. download the confirmation of proposal submission - to be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the host institution; and
5. upload the signed confirmation of proposal submission.

Once the proposal is completed and all the required annexes attached, use the Wyślij do NCN [Send to NCN] button to submit the proposal to the NCN electronically via the ZSUN/OSF system.

Once the call for proposals has been closed:

1. evaluation of proposals will be carried out;
2. after each stage of evaluation, the funding decision by the NCN Director will be delivered;
3. if the proposal is qualified for funding, a funding agreement will be entered into; and
4. the project will be carried out pursuant to the funding agreement and Regulations on the implementation of research projects, fellowships and scholarships.

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.