National Science Centre announces major amendments to grant call rules

The Council of the National Science Centre outlines proposed amendments to the NCN call procedure to address the growing number of proposals and raising project costs, while working within a limited NCN budget. 

Over the past few years, NCN has observed a steady increase in the number of proposals submitted, while the success rate has remained relatively low. As a consequence, the organisational workload of NCN and the experts involved in the evaluation procedure is also increasing significantly, putting the quality and timely completion of the evaluation procedure at risk. The rising cost of research is a key challenge, further limiting the number of projects that can be funded, including projects that receive high evaluation scores.

In view of these challenges, the NCN Council is considering the introduction of more selective call mechanisms which will further reduce the number of proposals submitted, while at the same time encouraging researchers with extensive experience in grant-funded research to make greater use of European research funding opportunities. Furthermore, research funding sources would become more diversified, while NCN grant opportunities would remain available to researchers at all stages of their research career. 

The NCN Council is considering the following solutions: 

From 2027: New restrictions in the number of proposals submitted to NCN. The same person may be designated as the principal investigator in only one proposal submitted to NCN in a given calendar year. 

From 2028: Restricted participation in the OPUS call. A principal investigator who has received at least two OPUS grants over the past 10 years will be eligible to apply for another OPUS grant, provided they have previously submitted a grant proposal to ERC (on terms similar to those applicable to the MAESTRO call).

The NCN Council will adopt specific terms and regulations implementing the amendments in question this autumn. The restrictions may, however, be temporary and subject to modification if the NCN budged is significantly increased.