We are launching the MINIATURA 8 call, in which PhD holders can vie for grants to fund single research activities. The budget of this year’s call is 20 million zlotys.
The call is open to proposals for single research activities that have never been funded by the NCN or any other institution before. They may involve preliminary/pilot studies, library and archive research, fellowships, research visits and/or consultations. An important change this year is that applicants may include more than one of these forms, as long as they can justify and prove this is necessary for them to complete the activity and achieve their objectives. The activity may be planned over up to 12 months and its budget must fall between 5,000 and 50,000 zlotys.
The call is targeted at researchers who wish to conduct basic research and carry out a single research activity to prepare a research proposal they intend to submit under NCN calls or other national or international calls in the future.
Applicants must hold a PhD degree, awarded no earlier than 1 January 2012. The eligibility period may be extended to account for a childcare leave or a career break due to incapacity to work. Applicants must demonstrate at least one paper published or one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art. They need to have a valid, full-time employment contract at their institution on the day the proposal is submitted. Their research record must not include any previous NCN grants in which they have acted as PIs or held scholarships/fellowships under ETIUDA, FUGA, and UWERTURA. Any single applicant can be awarded a MINIATURA grant only once.
Proposals will be accepted via the OSF system until 4 pm (CEST) on 31 July 2024.
Call procedure and peer review
MINIATURA differs from other NCN calls in terms of proposal intake and assessment. Proposals will be accepted from the beginning of February until the end of July; they will be passed forward to reviewers on a rolling basis and new results will be announced every month.
It is important to remember that the call budget (PLN 20 million) is divided proportionally so that the same pool of resources is available each month. Accordingly, researchers are encouraged not to put off their decision to apply until the very last month to make sure their proposal is not rejected only because of insufficient funds left over for that month.
Intake may be suspended when the total amount of resources requested by applicants is more than double the budget of the call, i.e. more than 40 million zlotys.
Proposals will undergo a merit-based evaluation by an expert team appointed by the NCN Council for the purposes of MINIATURA 8. The evaluation procedure consists of just one stage; for each proposal, experts draw up three independent assessments based on predefined criteria. The final decision for any single proposal will be issued within five months of its submission.