SHENG 4

NCN proposals may be submitted by entities specified in Article 27 (1) of the NCN Act, hereinafter referred to as the “applicants”, i.e.:

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 2020, item 1796, as amended),
4. research institutes operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2022, item 498),
5. international research institutes established pursuant to separate Acts operating in the Republic of Poland,

5a.the 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,

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 2022, item 498, as amended),
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 (Journal of Laws of 2019, item 1183, as amended),
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 2022, item 2474),
13. legal entities established with their registered office in Poland,

13a. President of the Central Office of Measures,

14. natural persons, and
15. companies conducting research in another organisational form than laid down in sections 1-13.

If a research project is carried out by at least two Polish entities applying for NCN funding, they must form a group of entities (see Point 8 above) and as such may apply for NCN funding. Proposals are submitted by the leader identified in the research project cooperation agreement concluded by a group of entities. The principal investigator’s employer acts as the leader of the group of entities.

If, pursuant to Article 27 (1) (2) of the NCN Act, the Polish entities cannot form a group of entities, they cannot apply for NCN funding of a joint research project.

The principal investigator in a Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree when submitting the proposal and manage the work of the Polish research team.

The publication list of the principal investigator (drafted according to the attached template) should include no more than 10 most important papers published or accepted for publication (with letters of acceptance from publishers) in the proposal submission year or over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year (starting from 2014). The 10-year publication period may be extended in the cases laid down in the Regulations (Chapter 6, Point (6) (5) (5)).

Principal investigators must reside in Poland for at least 50% of the project duration period. This period includes project-related business trips, in particular involving fieldwork, participation in conferences and/or library and archive research.

The principal investigator must be a person employed by the host institution for the Polish part of the research project under an employment contract on at least a half-time basis for the entire project performance period. The person named as the principal investigator in a proposal submitted to SHENG 4 must not be the authorised representative of the host institution for the project.

There are restrictions on submitting proposals. They are laid down in Point V of NCN Council Resolution No 115/2024 of 14 November 2024 on the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams and funded by the NCN under the SHENG 4 Polish-Chinese Funding Initiative.

Proposals submitted under SHENG 4 must cover basic research in one of the following panels: HS (HS6_01-HS6_08, HS6_14-HS6_15), ST (ST4, ST5, ST8 and ST11) and NZ (NZ1-NZ9), laid down in Annex 1 to the NCN Council Resolution on the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams and funded by the NCN under the SHENG 4 Polish-Chinese Funding Initiative.

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

Joint project descriptions (JPD) and CVs with the publication lists of principal investigators and co-investigators drafted jointly by the Polish and Chinese research teams must be in English.

Information in the JPD and CVs with the publication lists of the principal investigators and co-investigators must be consistent with the information in the respective sections of the NCN proposal submitted to the OSF system and annexes thereto.

There is a strict limit of 30 pages for the JPD (page size: A4, font: Arial, font size: 11 or 12, line spacing: 1.15, left-right margins: 2.5 cm, top-bottom margins 1.5 cm). Files with JPDs exceeding the 30-page limit will be rejected by the OSF submission system.

Please upload the CVs with the publication lists for the principal investigators and co-investigators (including their names) of the Polish and foreign research teams, in English, according to the template provided in the call text, together with the publication lists of principal investigators and co. CVs must include information on the their research career, including research project management (if applicable), research experience at home and abroad (if applicable) and the most important prizes and awards (if applicable). The limit for the research career description is 8000 characters.

Each principal investigator and co-investigator (identified by name) should attach a list of up to 10 papers published over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission date (starting from 2014). Older publications can be cited only if the Polish principal investigator or member of the Polish research team has taken significant career breaks within the last 10 years, as laid down in the Resolution.

In the case of papers that have been accepted for publication but not yet published, the principal investigator and members of the Polish research team are required to attach letters of acceptance from publishers confirming that the papers have been accepted for publication or provide their DOI in the publication list. If these conditions are not met, the papers will be disregarded in the evaluation procedure.

CVs with publication lists must only be provided for members of the Polish research teams who are at least PhD holders and are not selected in an open call procedure. Names of persons selected in an open call procedure, including persons to be employed as post-docs from the NCN budget, must not be revealed in the proposal or joint project description (JPD).

Creating a project budget is one of the most important aspects of project planning, which aims at identifying the required resources and estimating the costs. The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research, based on realistic calculations and must specify the expenditures covered by the NCN (eligible costs).

The proposal may be rejected if an unreasonable budget is planned and/or discrepancies occur between the costs of projects to be carried out by Polish research teams in the proposal and the JPD.

There is no limit for funding but the costs must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research. For more information on the costs of research projects funded by the NCN under SHENG 4, please refer to Annex 2 to the Resolution.

Eligible costs are subdivided into direct and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

• • salary:
  1. full time remuneration: funds for full-time employment of the principal investigator (PLN 170,000 per annum if the principal investigator is employed pursuant to a full-time employment contract) or post-doc(s) (PLN 140,000 per annum or more in well-justified cases),
  2. additional remuneration for members of the research team,
  3. salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students. The project budget must be developed pursuant to the regulations concerning the project costs for salaries and scholarships laid down in the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under SHENG 4. NCN scholarships are awarded pursuant to the Regulations on awarding scholarships.
• purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices and software,
• other direct costs, including
  1. purchase of materials and small instruments,
  2. outsourced services,
  3. business trips, visits and consultations (PLEASE NOTE: The costs of consultations and visits by Chinese partners who receive parallel funding from the NSFC are ineligible),
  4. compensation for collective investigators, and
  5. other costs crucial to the project that fall under none of the previous categories and comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under SHENG 4, such as:
     • costs of purchasing data/databases or access thereto,
     • specialist publications, teaching aids.

Costs of promotion of the project and project results may be planned under the project.

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.

At the stage of project implementation, the institution must arrange with the principal investigator the coverage of at least 25% of the indirect cost value.

When developing the budget, it is necessary to consider the following:

1. proposals must specify the budget for tasks performed by the Polish team together with justification of individual cost categories; JPD – for the tasks performed by the Polish and Chinese research teams together with justification of individual cost categories;
2. the budget in the proposal must be specified in PLN; in the JPD – in EUR;
3. the budget planned for the Polish team in the JPD must be consistent with the budget in the proposal in the OSF submission system. The justification of costs planned for the Polish research team in the proposal submitted to the OSF submission system must be consistent with the justification of the costs in the JPD (the justification may be copied from the NCN proposal in the OSF submission system and pasted to the relevant section of the JPD);
4. the budget of the Polish part of the project in the JPD must be calculated according to the exchange rate published by the National Bank of Poland on the date of the NCN Council Resolution on the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams and funded by the NCN under the SHENG 4 Polish-Chinese Funding Initiative, where EUR 1 = PLN 4.3365 (exchange rate of 14 November 2024); and
5. the maximum funding: not specified (the costs must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research).

The proposal may be rejected if an unreasonable budget is planned.

If the costs planned for Polish research teams in the JPD are not justified in detail, the proposal may be rejected at the stage of eligibility check; the merit-based evaluation of proposals submitted to SHENG 4 is carried out on the basis of the joint project description (JPD) and includes evaluation of the justification of the costs of the Polish part of the research project as regards the subject and scope of the research, hence the justification of the costs of the Polish research team in the JPD must be comprehensive, detailed and consistent with the justification of the costs in the OSF submission system. It is not enough to provide the justifications in the budget completed in the OSF submission system only as the budget presented in the OSF submission system is not subject to merit-based evaluation performed by the experts. If the costs are not justified in the JPD, the proposal may be rejected.

In the case of discrepancies between the costs for Polish research teams in the NCN proposal and the JPD, the proposal may be rejected at the stage of an eligibility check.

Pursuant to the Open Access Policy (adopted on 27 May 2020, as amended), all research results should be made available in full and immediate open access. According to the Decision of the NCN Director of 30 September 2024, the relaxed terms of the Open Access Policy have been extended.

The Open Access Policy does not apply to monographs, monograph chapters and peer-reviewed collected papers.

The National Science Centre recognizes the following publication routes as compliant with its Open Access Policy:

1. publication in open access journals and on open access platforms registered, or with pending registration, in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ);
2. publication in subscription journals or hybrid journals, as long as the VoR, AAM or preprint (if AAM and VoR are embargoed) is deposited in a repository registered in the OpenDOAR database immediately upon the article’s publication on the publisher’s website. If preprints are published, AAM of the same work must also be deposited in the repository upon the end of the embargo period;
3. publication in journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of so-called transformative agreements[1] that must be inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry) as long as the article has been accepted for publication or published by 31 December 2025.

Manuscripts must be published using the following licences:

• selected CC-4.0 licence for full open access journals (Route 1);
• for subscription or hybrid journals (Route 2), preprints must be deposited in the repository using CC BY 4.0 licence immediately upon the article’s online publication on the publisher’s website. AAM must also be deposited in the repository upon the end of the embargo period. The NCN does not impose any licence-related restrictions for AAMs upon the end of the embargo period;
• for journals covered by transformative agreements (Route 3), the following licences can be used: CC BY 4.0; CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY-ND 4.0.

Eligibility of Article Processing Charges:

• Route 1: costs are eligible as long as CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-ND 4.0. licences are used;
• Route 2: costs are not eligible and must not be covered by NCN funds;
• Route 3: costs are eligible as long as the CC BY 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY-ND 4.0. licences are used.

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 deposited in the repository, according to the Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 licence or Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0). Other licences can also be used as long as they ensure an equivalent level of data openness as CC0 or CC BY 4.0. 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.

The terms of the call do not specify a minimum or maximum number of research team members. However, the rationale of involvement of co-investigators in the project is subject to evaluation by the Expert Team. The project must include the description of competencies and tasks to be performed by individual members of the Expert Team.

Please remember that:

• NCN scholarship recipients or post-docs in the project must be selected in an open call;
• persons to be selected in an open call procedure, including post-docs remunerated from the NCN budget, must not be named in the proposals, JPDs or CVs with the publication lists;
• prospective post-docs must comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under SHENG 4.

Yes, they can. However, if the applicant is a natural person, the host institution for the project must not be a group of entities or entity for which project funding constitutes state aid.

More information on state aid in research projects funded by the National Science Centre can be found in the State aid section.

If a project is carried out in an institution for which project funding constitutes state aid, funds for students and PhD students may only be planned as “remuneration for students and PhD students” in the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under SHENG 4 (Point 2 (1) (3) (c)).

The documents related to the application for state aid must bear a qualified electronic signature in the PAdES format.

A funding proposal for a joint research project must be submitted to the NCN and the NSFC by the Polish and Chinese research teams, respectively. Under SHENG 4, proposals are submitted to two electronic submission systems: OSF for proposals submitted to the NCN and NSFC for proposals submitted to the Chinese agency.

• Proposals must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system available at www.osf.opi.org.pl by 17 March 2025, 4 pm CET.
• Chinese applicants must submit a set of documents required by the NSFC via its electronic submission system available at https://grants.nsfc.gov.cn/pmpweb/login by 17 March 2025, 4 pm CST.
• Joint Polish-Chinese research project funding proposals attached to the NCN proposals in OSF must be the same as the one submitted to the NSFC.

Information in the proposals must be consistent with information in the JPD and CV with the publication list. If any discrepancies are found, the proposal may also be rejected at the stage of an eligibility check.

Under SHENG 4, proposals are subject to a parallel eligibility check and merit-based evaluation performed by the NCN and the NSFC, which means that each agency performs a separate eligibility check and merit-based evaluation. Proposals submitted to the NSFC are evaluated pursuant to NSFC’s rules and regulations, whilst proposals submitted to the NCN are evaluated pursuant to NCN’s rules and regulations. Funding under SHENG 4 is awarded to proposals recommended for funding by both the NCN and the NSFC.

ELIGIBILITY CHECK

Eligibility check of proposals is performed by the coordinators and comprises:

1) verification of proposal’s completeness;

2) verification whether the proposal meets the eligibility criteria set forth in the resolution and call text;

3) verification whether the expenditures outlined in the proposal and JPD as regards the Polish part of the research project comply with the Annex on the Costs in research projects funded by the NCN under SHENG 4;

4) verification whether the data in the JPD complies with information in the proposal submitted to the OSF submission system.

A proposal may also be rejected as ineligible at a later stage of evaluation.

MERIT-BASED EVALUATION

Only complete proposals that comply with the terms of the call laid down in the Resolution and call text that are approved as eligible by both the NCN and the NSFC, are subject to a merit-based evaluation.

The merit-based evaluation at the NSFC is performed in two stages according to the terms of the NSFC:

1. preliminary evaluation carried out by the Expert Team established by the NCN. Information in the NCN proposal and annexes thereto are evaluated. Each NCN proposal is evaluated independently by two members of the Expert Team.

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 seek a second opinion from a member of another Expert Team.

The Expert Team compiles a list of proposals recommended for the second stage of merit-based evaluation during the first meeting, following a discussion. The proposals are then subject to:

2. specialist evaluation. The proposals are sent to at least two external reviewers who perform their reviews on the basis of information in the proposal and annexes thereto.

On the basis of the reviews performed by the external reviewers, the Expert Team compiles a list of proposals recommended for funding during the second meeting.

The list of proposals recommended for funding by the NCN Expert Teams is the basis for the final ranking list compiled pursuant to comparison of the results of merit-based evaluation performed by the NCN and the NSFC. Funding in SHENG 4 is awarded to proposals recommended by both the NCN and the NSFC.

Once the final ranking list is compiled based on the comparison of the results of merit-based evaluation performed by the NCN and the NSFC, information on the results of merit-based evaluation in SHENG 4 will be published in the OSF submission system and communicated to the applicants electronically, by way of a decision of the NCN Director.

For more information on the proposal evaluation procedure at the NCN, please refer to the Proposal evaluation procedure for Expert Teams under SHENG 4.

In the course of merit-based evaluation of proposals, the following criteria are reviewed:

1. compliance with the basic research criteria laid down in Article 2 (1) of the NCN Act;
2. quality and innovative nature of research or tasks to be performed;
3. impact of the research project on the advancement of the scientific discipline;
4. assessment of feasibility of the research;
5. novelty of the research problem to be solved;
6. scientific achievements of principal investigators and members of the Polish and Chinese research teams, including publications in renowned academic press/ journals;
7. evaluation of other projects carried out by the principal investigators and members of the Polish and Chinese research teams and funded by the NCN and/or from other sources;
8. complementary nature and legitimacy of international cooperation for the research project;
9. justification of the costs as regards the subject and scope of research; and
10. development of the proposal and compliance with other requirements of the call text.

Proposals are evaluated pursuant to the Proposal Evaluation Criteria for SHENG 4.

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 ALSO APPLIES TO the data management evaluation criteria and research ethics evaluation criteria as regards the subject of the research with respect to the Chinese research teams.

If the data management section or ethics section are filled in with incorrect or insufficient data, the proposal may be rejected at the stage of merit-based evaluation and refused funding.

Pursuant to Article 30 of the NCN Act, if there are reasonable doubts as to the ethical aspects of the Polish or Chinese parts of the research, an additional merit-based evaluation of proposals can be performed in this regard.

Proposals are evaluated by the Expert Team. Experts are selected by the NCN Council among eminent Polish and foreign researchers with 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 website and communicated to the applicants in a decision of the NCN Director by the end of November 2025.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact the NCN officers listed below.

General affairs:

Dr Magdalena Nowak 

Coordinator for Physical Sciences and Engineering

Dr Magdalena Jarosz

Coordinator for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Dr Katarzyna Jarecka-Stępień

Coordinator for Life Sciences

Dr Mateusz Sobczyk

NSFC:

Jin Xu

If you are intending to submit a proposal to SHENG 4:

1. read all call documents included in the call text, in particular:
   1. Resolution on the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams and funded by the NCN under the SHENG 4 Polish-Chinese Funding Initiative;
   2. Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under SHENG 4;
   3. Template of Joint project description (JPD) and CVs with a publication lists;
   4. NCN proposal form template, where you can find out about the information and annexes needed to complete the electronic proposal form in the OSF submission system;
2. find out about the proposal submission procedure;
3. obtain data from the host institution for the project 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);
4. draw up and compile:

• a joint project description (JPD) in English and CVs with the publication lists of the principal investigators and co-investigators at the Polish and Chinese research teams,
• when the proposal is submitted by a group of Polish entities, a research project cooperation agreement, and
• letters of acceptance from publishers confirming that the paper has been accepted for publication (when the scientific achievements section of the Polish principal investigator and/or member of the Polish research team includes papers accepted for publication but not published yet).

Before a proposal is submitted to the NCN:

1. 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 all information has been entered correctly and that the required annexes have been attached;
2. disable editing of the final version of the proposal to the NCN;
3. download the confirmation of proposal submission to be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the institution; and
4. upload the signed confirmation of proposal submission.

Once the proposal has been completed and appended with the required annexes, use the Wyślij do NCN [Send to the NCN] button to submit the NCN proposal to the NCN electronically via OSF by 17 March 2025, 16:00 CET.

Upon the end of the call for proposals:

1. evaluation of proposals will be carried out by the NCN and the NSFC,
2. following the merit-based evaluation, a funding decision by the NCN Director will be communicated to the applicant (awarding or refusing funding),
3. if the proposal is recommended for funding, a funding agreement will be entered into, and
4. 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 related to actions performed by the NCN, the applicant may appeal against the decision of the NCN Director with the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council within 14 days of the date of effective service of the decision.