Scientists from Warsaw and Poznań win grants in forest-related call

Tue, 01/16/2024 - 14:00
Kod CSS i JS

Three out of four projects selected under the ForestValue2 Call 2023 will involve Polish research teams. The scientists, who will receive more than 2.7 million zlotys in funding, will work on research problems concerning the use of forest resources for balanced social, economic, environmental and climate benefits.

ForestValue2 (HORIZON EUROPE Coordination and Support Action) is an initiative designed to support research related to the forest-based bioeconomy. Specifically, the ForestValue2 Call 2023 was open to international research consortia working on interdisciplinary projects in a transnational collaborative systems-approach aimed at producing knowledge to support the best possible use of forests and forest resources.

The call was organised by agencies from eleven countries; funding for successful Polish researchers will be provided by the National Science Centre. An expert panel appointed for this purpose carried out a merit-based review of 21 proposals, eight of which included Polish teams. In the end, funding was awarded to four international projects with a total budget of c. 6.8 million euro; three of these involve Polish scientists.

Dr Lidia Stępińska-Ustasiak from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – ITECH Institute of Innovation and Technology, in cooperation with researchers from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – Poznań Institute of Technology, as well as Finland, Ireland, Italy, Norway and Slovenia, will work on CRESTIMB, a project focused on innovative timber construction systems with a prolonged service life. Specifically, the scientists will aim to develop an innovative timber system suitable for multi-storey buildings with open spaces, which would have a longer service life than existing solutions and provide for the potential reuse of its elements. The budget of the Polish part of the project is more than 1.1 million zlotys. The project represents an important step towards more sustainable, resource-efficient, cost-effective and environmentally-friendly construction.

A team led by Dr inż Jan Pełczyński from the Warsaw University of Technology will use its ForestValue2 Call 2023 grant to work on TiREX, a project aimed at a more effective reuse of existing buildings and their components. In cooperation with scientists from Finland, Norway, Latvia, Slovenia and Spain, the Polish team will develop a comprehensive condition assessment methodology for reclaimed timber, using non-destructive tests and automated data processing to evaluate whether the reuse of the material will be safe and effective. The project is meant as a step toward a European reclaimed timber certification system, which would boost its use, thus reducing the waste of valuable resources and cutting the emissions of noxious substances. The Polish team will receive nearly 1.3 million zlotys in funding.

The third and last project with Polish researchers funded under ForestValue2 Call 2023 is led by Dr Anna Wierzbicka from the Poznań University of Life Sciences in cooperation with scientists from Estonia, Finland and Slovenia. Entitled IFORPLAN, it aims to develop effective forest planning procedures, using spatial planning methods to best balance economic and environmental functions. The procedures developed in the project will be verified through a case study of hundreds of hectares of forest area in all the countries involved in the project. The project aims to enhance our understanding of multifunctional forest management and contribute to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals. The budget of the Polish team is almost 374 thousand zlotys.

CHIST-ERA Call 2023

Kod CSS i JS

16 January 2024

The National Science Centre (“NCN”), in cooperation with the CHIST-ERA network, hereby launches a call for international research projects in the following areas of:

  1. Multidimensional Geographic Information Systems (MultiGIS)
  2. Smart Contracts for Digital Transformation Ecosystems (SmartC)

Funding proposals may be submitted international consortia composed of at least three research teams from at least three participating countries. Standard consortium size: Three to six partners.

The principal investigator of the Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree.

Participating countries:

Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Lithuania, Latvia, Luxembourg, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, United Kingdom.

The application procedure:

  • International level: joint proposals are drafted by Polish research teams in cooperation with the foreign partners (in English) and submitted to the electronic submission system of the CHIST-ERA network (ESS)
  • National level: NCN proposals concerning the Polish part of the project are drafted by Polish research teams and submitted to the NCN electronically via the OSF submission system within 7 days of the date by which joint proposals must be submitted at international level.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a single-stage call which means that only full joint proposals are submitted at international level. More on the application procedure at international level can be found in the Call Text available on the website of the CHIST-ERA network.

Call Timeline:

  • Submission deadline for joint proposals in ESS: 10 April 2024, 17:00 CEST
  • Submission deadline for NCN proposals in OSF: 17 April 2024
  • Call results: October 2024
  • Project start date: December 2024

Under the CHIST-ERA Call 2023, funds can be applied for to cover salaries for members of the research team, salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and other costs crucial to the research project.

The total funding allocated by the NCN for research tasks to be performed by the Polish research teams under the call is 500 000 EUR.

Please read:

  • the call documents available at https://www.chistera.eu/ (for all applicants in the call);
  • information for applicants below and all annexes hereto (only for researchers applying for NCN funding).

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Who may apply for NCN funding?

Proposals in the call may be submitted by the following entities specified in the Act on the National Science Centre (NCN):

  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 2020, item 1383, as amended);
  5. international research institutes established pursuant to other acts and acting 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 2020, item 2098);

5b. institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network;

  1. Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences;
  2. other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis;
  3. 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);
  4. scientific and industrial centres laid down in the Act on Research Centres of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1383, as amended);
  5. research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences laid down in the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 1796);
  6. scientific libraries;
  7. companies operating as R&D centres laid down in the Act on certain forms of support for innovation activities of 30 May 2008 (Journal of Laws of 2021, item 706);
  8. legal entities with registered office in Poland;

13a. President of the Central Office of Measures;

  1. natural persons and
  2. companies conducting research in other organisational form than set forth in sections 1-13a.

If research projects are carried out by at least two Polish entities applying for NCN funding, they must set up a group of entities (see item 8 above) and as such submit NCN proposals. An NCN proposal is submitted by a leader specified in the research project cooperation agreement concluded by the group of entities. An entity employing the principal investigator acts as the leader of the group of entities.

If, pursuant to Article 27 (1) (2) of the NCN Act, Polish entities cannot set up groups of entities, they are not eligible to apply for NCN funding of a joint research project.

PLEASE NOTE: Under CHIST-ERA Call 2023, funding proposals may be submitted by applicants for which funding of a research project will not constitute state aid, see NCN Council Resolution No 113/2023 of 7 December 2023.

Who may act as a principal investigator?

The principal investigator of the Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree when submitting a proposal. Additional restrictions on submitting NCN proposals are laid down in Chapter IV of the Terms and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO, annexed to NCN Council Resolution No 32/2023 of 16 March 2023.

What are the topics covered by the call?

The call covers the following subjects:

  1. Multidimensional Geographic Information Systems (MultiGIS)
  2. Smart Contracts for Digital Transformation Ecosystems (SmartC)

More information on the subject of the call can be found in the CHIST-ERA Call Text.

Polish researchers may apply for NCN funding of their basic research projects.

NCN proposals comprising research tasks overlapping with research tasks to be carried out in another proposal that has been already submitted in an NCN call may only be submitted once the evaluation or appeal concerning the earlier proposal has been concluded to the effect other than granting funding.

What is the project duration?

Research projects may be planned in the call for a period of either 24 or 36 months.

What are the positions for members of the research team?

Apart from the principal investigator, research tasks in research projects may be performed by co-investigators, including students and PhD students as well as post-docs.

A post-doc type post is a full-time post designated by the principal investigator for a person who has been awarded a PhD degree in the year of employment in the project or within 7 years before 1 January of the year of employment in the project. This period may be extended pursuant to the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre.

PLEASE NOTE: A post-doc position may be occupied by a person who has been awarded a PhD degree by another entity than the one planning to employ him/her at this post or has completed a continuous and evidenced post-doctoral fellowship of at least 10 months in another entity than the participating entity and in another country than the one in which he/she have been awarded a PhD degree. A prospective post-doc must be selected in an open call.

PhD students receiving NCN scholarships for research must be selected in an open call.

Scholarship grantees and post-docs must not be named in joint proposals or NCN proposals.

The rationale for involvement of individual members of the research team in the project shall be evaluated by an international expert team. The project must include the description of competencies and tasks to be performed by individual members of the research team.

To find out more on the budget for salaries and scholarships, read the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

The terms of the call do not specify the maximum number of research team members.

How should the budget be planned?

We recommend that Polish applicants should consult the budget table of the Polish part of the project (see the Budget Table of the Polish research team) with the NCN. The budget table in .xlsx format should be sent to alicja.dylag@ncn.gov.pl by 29 March 2024.

Creating a project budget is one of the most important aspects in the project planning which aims at identifying the required resources and estimating the costs required to perform the research tasks. The project budget must be based on realistic calculations and must comply with the guidelines laid down in the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre within the multilateral collaboration UNISONO. The maximum budget of the Polish research team is not pre-determined; however, the rationale of expenses versus the scope of tasks is assessed by an international expert team.

The budget in NCN proposals must be quoted in PLN, while the budget in the joint proposal, in EUR.

The EUR budget for the Polish part of the research project in the joint proposal must be calculated according to the following exchange rate: 1 EUR = 4.5329 PLN.

The project budget (eligible costs) includes direct and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

  1. remuneration:
  • full-time employment: funds for full-time employment of the principal investigator or post-doc(s);
  • additional remuneration for members of the research team. If the principal investigator is not intending to be employed full-time in the project, his/her remuneration is paid from the pool allocated for additional remuneration;
  • salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students;
  1. purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices and software;
  2. purchase of materials and small equipment;
  3. outsourcing;
  4. business trips, visits and consultations;
  5. compensation for collective investigators;
  6. other costs crucial to the project which comply with the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

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) are not eligible until positively reviewed by the NCN.

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 performance, the participating entity shall arrange with the principal investigator for the distribution of at least 25 per cent of the indirect costs’ value.

PLEASE NOTE: The cost of open access to publications may only be incurred as indirect costs. The cost of open access planned as direct costs will be regarded ineligible. 

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

Open access publication of research results

Together with other European cOAlition agencies, the National Science Centre has drafted its Open Access Policy. In accordance with its vision of open access to research results and publications, the NCN requires that all research results should be made available in immediate open access. In accordance with the principles of Plan S, the National Science Centre recognises 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 (hybrid journals[1]), as long as the Version of Record (VoR[2]) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM[3]) is published, by the author or publisher, in an open repository immediately upon the article’s online publication;
  3. publication in journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of the so-called transformative agreements, inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry).

Publication in transformative journals (TJ[4]). Transformative journals must meet the criteria laid down in the Guidelines on the Implementation of Plan S and must allow open access publication of original scientific articles. This publication route (3) only applies to articles accepted for publication or published before 31 December 2024.

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).

Please read the Open Access Instructions.

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 made available in the repository, according to the Creative Commons Public Domain (CC0 licence[5]). 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.


[1] A hybrid journal is a subscription journal in which some of the articles are open access and some require payment of a publication fee.

[2] VoR is a version of record published in a journal with its own typeface and branding. Other terms: published version or publisher’s pdf.

[3] AAM is the final manuscript version created by the author, including all the revisions introduced after the peer review, and accepted for publication in the journal. Other terms: post print, accepted author manuscript.

[4] A transformative journal is a journal that is actively committed to transitioning from a subscription journal to a partially or fully Open Access journal. The current list of journals which have been afforded the Transformative Journal Status is available at https://www.coalition-s.org/plan-s-compliant-transformative-journals.

[5] CC0 licence is a licence that allows the distribution of data to public domain. Pursuant to the licence, authors can give up their intellectual property rights to the extend allowed by domestic law; the licence does not affect patent rights, rights of publicity or privacy.

Can proposals in this call include application for state aid?

State aid must not be requested under CHIST-ERA Call 2023 .

For more information, please go to the State aid rules.

What is the proposal evaluation procedure?

Joint proposals are subject to an eligibility check performed by the NCN, other members of the CHIST-ERA network participating in the call and the CHIST-ERA Call Secretariat.

Joint proposals deemed eligible are subject a to merit-based evaluation carried out by an international expert team pursuant to the Call Text.

NCN proposals are subject solely to an NCN eligibility check carried out by the coordinators.

The eligibility check of NCN proposals includes verification of proposals for completeness, compliance with the call documents and Resolution No 32/2023 adopted by the NCN Council on 16 March 2023, including compliance of the budget with an Annex to the Resolution (“Costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre in international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO”).

PLEASE NOTE: The information provided in NCN proposals and in joint proposals must be consistent and joint proposals annexed to NCN proposals must be the same as joint proposals submitted at international level.

Who performs the merit-based evaluation of proposals?

Only joint proposals are subject to a merit-based evaluation which is performed by an international expert team established jointly by the members of the CHIST-ERA network participating in the call. To find out more on the evaluation of proposals, please go to the call text available on the website of the CHIST-ERA network.

When and how will the results be announced?

The CHIST-ERA Call 2023 is expected to be concluded in October 2024.

Firstly, project coordinators will be notified of the outcome. Polish research teams will be notified by way of decisions of the NCN Director.

In the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements related to actions performed by the NCN, applicants may lodge an appeal against the decision of the NCN Director with the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council.

Where can additional information be found?

For more information on the call, please go to the website of the CHIST-ERA network. For the terms and regulations on awarding NCN funding in the call, please refer to the Annex to NCN Council Resolution No 32/2023.

Should you have any more questions or queries, please contact us by e-mail or by phone:

Useful information

If you are intending to submit a proposal to the CHIST-ERA Call, please:

  1. read all call documents, in particular:
  1. CHIST-ERA Call Text available on the website of the CHIST-ERA network;
  2. terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO;

Before submitting an NCN proposal to the NCN at national level:

  1. collect the data from the applicant 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); if the proposal is submitted by a group of Polish entities, draw up a research project cooperation agreement,
  2. make sure that the information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Checking the proposal for completeness in the OSF submission system with the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button does not guarantee that the information entered is correct and the required annexes have been attached;
  3. check if the tabs have been completed in the correct language;
  4. disable the final version of the proposal to the NCN; and
  5. download the confirmation of proposal submission which must be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the institution.

Once the proposal has been completed and required annexes have been attached, the proposal shall be submitted to the NCN electronically via the OSF submission system using the Wyślij do NCN [Send to NCN] button.

Once the call for proposals has been closed:

  1. evaluation of proposals shall be carried out;
  2. if the proposal is recommended for funding, a funding agreement shall be entered into;
  3. the project shall be carried out pursuant to the funding agreement and Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

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 shall be lodged within 14 days of the effective delivery of the decision.

Call documents

CHIST-ERA network:

The call documents applicable to all applicants are available on the website of the CHIST-ERA Network.

Narodowe Centrum Nauki:

  1. Terms and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO
  2. Budget table of the Polish research team
  3. Proposal form template
  4. Guidelines for applicants to complete NCN proposals in the OSF submission system
  5. Procedure for submitting NCN proposals to the OSF submission system
  6. Regulations on awarding scholarships in NCN-funded research projects
  7. Research project cooperation agreement
  8. State Aid in CHIST-ERA Call 2023
  9. State aid rules
  10. Guidelines for applicants to complete the ethics issues form in the proposal
  11. Guidelines for applicants to complete the data management plan form in the proposal
  12. NCN’ Open access policy, wraz ze as amended 
  13. Guidelines: Open Access Policy
  14. Code of the National Science Centre on research integrity and applying for research funding
  15. NCN’s position on collaboration with the Russian Federation

Documents applicable to the evaluation of proposals:

  1. Service of decisions of the NCN Director
  2. Guidelines for applicants to appeal against the NCN Director’s decisions

Documents to be read before starting an NCN project:

  1. Agreement template (Agreement template for winners of the previous Era-Net call launched by the NCN – draft version that may be amended when the agreement with the NCN is entered into)
  2. Order establishing a procedure for auditing undertakings selected in the calls funded by the National Science Centre
  3. Guidelines for entities auditing the implementation of research projects funded by the National Science Centre
  4. Evaluation of monographs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre
  5. Information on personal data processing

Stabilisation of lithium-metal anodes with porphyrin-based electrolyte additives

Principal Investigator :
Dr hab. Szymon Godlewski
Jagiellonian University

Panel: ST5

Funding scheme : M-ERA
announced on 16 March 2022

In our age and time, as the world searches for alternative energy sources and ways to expand their use, power collection and storage play an incredibly important role. One of the key areas of current research and technological development focuses on the construction and improvement of batteries, and lithium-ion batteries (LIB) are among the leading rechargeable battery technologies nowadays. However, they are now reaching the limits of their performance. One proposed solution to address their limitations is to replace lithium-carbon anodes used in LIBs with lithium-metal batteries (LMB). It is expected that the implementation of this technology would increase the anodic capacity more than tenfold and liberate volume within the battery to accommodate more cathode material (which is of key importance to battery performance). Unfortunately, the practical applications of LMBs are complicated by the fact that the high-performance liquid electrolytes used in LIBs do not prevent their degradation, i.e. the formation of Li-metal dendrites during repeated charge and discharge, which can lead to internal short circuits and potentially catastrophic battery failure.

Dr hab. Szymon Godlewski, photo by Michał ŁepeckiDr hab. Szymon Godlewski, photo by Michał Łepecki The goal of our project is to develop an effective solution to this problem, based on the addition of porphyrin derivatives to the electrolyte in Li-metal cells. It is expected that molecule application could help increase the battery cycle life, as the formation of dendrite structures is prevented by the incorporation of porphyrin derivatives into the solid-electrolyte-interface (SEI) layer.

Our project will analyse the impact of the organic material, such as porphyrin derivatives or phthalocyanines, known as tetrapyrrole macrocycles (TPMs) on the battery durability. So far, it has been shown that a modified SEI is significantly more effective at preventing the formation of dendrites in the long term. The successful implementation of this effect would be a game-changer in the development of high-capacity Li-based batteries.

To this end, we will experimentally study the structure and the formation process of a modified SEI formed by porphyrin derivatives as a basis for further electrolyte optimisation. In addition, we will develop computational models of the underlying structure, as well as the functional and mechanical properties of the modified SEI, to predict further optimisation pathways. Further, we are planning to optimise the composition of the electrolyte at the laboratory scale for future use in LMBs with a commercially available cathode material, and, at the last stage, fabricate a full cell demonstrator device and validate its performance. Our partners in Germany and Denmark will be responsible for constructing and optimising batteries for further practical applications. Our experience and research park will allow to study the lithium - molecule interface with truly atomic precision. Thanks to the use of scanning tunnelling microscopes (STM) and atomic force microscopes (AFM), which guarantee exceptional high-precision imaging, we will be able to get a deep insight into the atomic-scale architectural details of the interface. Moreover, we are planning to use the on-surface synthesis approach to create covalent molecular structures on highly reactive surfaces for the first time. In the past ten to twenty years, this innovative approach has allowed scientists to obtain new, hitherto unattainable molecular systems with atomic precision. This project will address the incredibly exciting, albeit difficult task of creating new chemical bonds between molecular structures on a highly reactive lithium surface. Our research will provide a new insight into the chemistry of molecular structures on anodic surfaces and help us enter a brand new research area of controlled reactions on chemically active surfaces.

3D image of the non-contact atomic force microscopy of undecacene generated through “on-surface synthesis” approach3D image of the non-contact atomic force microscopy of undecacene generated through “on-surface synthesis” approach

M-ERA.NET 3 has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 685451.

Project title: Stabilization of Lithium Metal Anodes with Porphyrin-based Electrolyte Additives

Dr hab. Szymon Godlewski

Kierownik - dodatkowe informacje

Szymon Godlewski is a professor at the Jagiellonian University. He earned his PhD in 2011, followed by the degree of habilitated doctor in 2019. Ever since the early days of his career, his research interests have centred on constructing atomic and molecular systems. In the last few years, he has focused his attention on the so-called on-surface synthesis approach to initiate chemical reactions and create new organic structures directly on crystalline substrates. He has received several awards for his scientific activities, such as the scholarship of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education for outstanding young researchers and the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) scholarships. He has conducted research projects funded by the National Science Centre (NCN) under the SONATA, SONATA BIS and OPUS schemes.

Prof. Szymon Godlewski,photo by Michał Łepecki

ERC PoC for Krzysztof Fic

Mon, 01/15/2024 - 11:00
Kod CSS i JS

Prof. Krzysztof Fic from the Poznań University of Technology, member of the NCN Council, has just won a Proof of Concept grant, awarded by the European Research Council. This is the 80th ERC grant for a researcher based in Poland.

Dr hab. inż Krzysztof Fic is a professor at the Faculty of Chemical Technology of the Prof. Krzysztof Fic at the NCN Days 2022 in BiałystokProf. Krzysztof Fic at the NCN Days 2022 in Białystok Poznań University of Technology. His research centres on electrochemical energy storage and conversion systems.

In 2017, he was the first Polish researcher affiliated with a technology university to win an ERC Starting Grant; his project was to develop a new type of high-power electrochemical capacitor, new concepts of electrolytes and a new operando technique for capacitor characterisation. The research project ended in 2023.

In the one that has now won the ERC PoC grant, Prof. Krzysztof Fic will work to convince the energy storage market of the attractiveness of this electrochemical capacitor with high specific power, energy and cycle durability. He will conduct his research with scientists from other European countries and Japan.

The Proof of Concept call is open to researchers who have previously completed an ERC grant and wish to commercialise its research results.

Prof. Krzysztof Fic has been a member of the NCN Council since 2020 and heads its international cooperation committee.

You can read more about his research in an article published online by “Forum Akademickie”: “It is basic research that serves as the flywheel of innovation”.

The European Research Council has thus far awarded a total of 80 grants to researchers working in Poland. The ERC funds projects under the following grant calls: Starting Grant (for entry-level researchers), Consolidator Grant (for researchers 7-12 years after their PhD), Advanced Grant (for advanced researchers), as well as ERC Synergy and Proof of Concept. The majority of ERC grant winners working at Polish institutions have worked on NCN grants.

The following researchers won ERC grants in 2023:

PAAS and PAS presidents appeal for NCN budget increase

Fri, 01/12/2024 - 14:30
Kod CSS i JS

“The statements made by the Minister of Science and Higher Education failed to include any specific commitment to raising the budget of the NCN, whose steady decrease has been one of the chief threats to the development of science in Poland”, reads a statement from Professors Jan Ostrowski and Marek Konarzewski, who appealed for more funding for the agency.

The presidents of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (PAAS) and the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS) have expressed their approval following a statement by the Minister of Science and Higher Education, Dariusz Wieczorek, who promised to increase state spending on research and higher education in 2024, including higher wages for researchers and the administrative personnel of universities and research institutes, and announced an increase in funding for PAS institutes. However, they also pointed out that “the statement failed to include any specific commitment to raising the budget of the NCN”.

The success rate, i.e. the proportion of applicants who win a grant, in recently concluded NCN calls dropped to just a few percent. “Many good research projects cannot be completed and the intellectual effort that has gone into their preparation goes to waste”, argue the two presidents. They also point out that the steady decrease in the NCN budget “has been one of the chief threats to the development of science in Poland”, and appeal, on behalf of the members of both Academies, for an increase in funding “to a level that would allow 25% of submitted research projects to be funded”.

Full text

The research community has been supporting the NCN in its campaign for additional budget resources for a long time. Most recently, in December 2023, a group of MNiSW scholarship winners issued an appeal to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Science and Higher Education, in which they requested a revision of the resources allocated to the NCN “as the flagship institution that ensures politically independent, merit-based funding of scientific research”. Over the last few months, support for the NCN has also been voiced by the winners of ERC grants, awards and scholarships from the Foundation for Polish Science, and the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science programme.

During a debate on 21 December 2023, Andrzej Domański, Minister of Finance, declared that the new state budget will include resources for the “important purpose” of increasing the budget of the National Science Centre.

More about the financial needs of the NCN and the researchers it supports.

JPIAMR IMPACT Call announced

Wed, 01/10/2024 - 12:00
Kod CSS i JS

Together with the JPIAMR we are launching a call for international research projects on antimicrobial resistance: “Interventions Moving forward to Promote ACTion to counteract the emergence and spread of bacterial and fungal resistance and to improve treatments". Funds for Polish research teams sum up to 500,000 EUR.

The primary aim of the call is to take action against the growing global threat of increased spread of antimicrobial (antibacterial and antifungal) resistance. Projects funded in the call must aim to improve, compare and evaluate the effectiveness, cost effectiveness, and uptake of existing interventions against bacterial or fungal infections and/or to design new interventions against fungal infections.

The estimated call budget is around 20 million EUR. Polish research teams participating in the call will be funded by the National Science Centre (NCN), which has allocated 500,000 EUR for that purpose.

Proposals may be submitted by international research consortia composed of at least 3 research teams from at least 3 different countries participating in the call, with at least 2 from the EU member states or associated countries, limited to 2 teams from a single country.

Organisations from 19 countries will participate in the call: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom.

Polish research teams may apply to the NCN for the funding of basic research projects only. The principal investigator of the Polish team must hold at least a PhD degree. Research projects may be planned for a period of either 24 or 36 months.

The application procedure in the IMPACT Call is divided into two stages. In the first stage Polish teams, in cooperation with foreign partners, must prepare a a joint proposal and submit it by March 14, 2024 at 14:00 CET via the PT-Outline system. The proposals will undergo a merit-based evaluation performed by the international expert team appointed by the Secretariat of the call.

After a positive evaluation, consortia will be invited to submit full proposals by 9 July 2024. Polish teams additionally will have to submit a proposal regarding the Polish part of the project via the OSF electronic submission system within 7 days of submitting full proposals at the international level. The results of the call will be published in November 2024.

Researchers interested in the call are invited to participate in the webinar on 24 January 2024 at 13:00 (CET). Register here.

Partner Search Tool is also available to find project partners and publish offers of collaboration.

Results of the Weave-UNISONO call for Polish-German projects

Mon, 01/08/2024 - 11:00
Kod CSS i JS

Dr Michał Ślęzak from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT in Wrocław will team up with German scientists for a research project selected under the Weave-UNISONO call. The Polish team will receive more than 2.2. million zlotys in funding.

Dr Michał Ślęzak from the Łukasiewicz Research Network – PORT in Wrocław, together with Dr hab. Mathias Schmidt from the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich and Dr Nils Gassen from the University of Bonn, Clinical Center, will work on a project entitled “Role of the mitochondrial metabolism of astrocytes in chronic stress”, which seeks to investigate the neurobiological basis for psychiatric disorders. Their key research hypothesis is that chronic stress upsets the metabolism of astrocytes (a type of glial brain cells), which may lead to a dysfunction in neural circuits responsible for affective control. The combination of the skills and knowledge brought in by these three different teams is expected to allow the discovery of new molecular targets for future therapies and better solutions for the treatment of stress-related disorders.

The proposal was evaluated by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in its capacity as the lead agency and the National Science Centre accepted its decision within the framework of the Weave programme.

Weave-UNISONO

The Weave-UNISONO call is the result of multilateral cooperation between research-funding agencies associated in Science Europe and aims at simplifying the submission and selection procedures for research proposals that bring together researchers from two or three different European countries in any discipline of science.

The selection process is based on the Lead Agency Procedure (LAP), under which only one partner institution is responsible for merit-based review and the others simply accept the result.

Under Weave, partner research teams apply in parallel to the lead agency and their relevant domestic institutions. Their joint proposal must include coherent research programmes and clearly spell out the added value of international cooperation.

The Weave-UNISONO call accepts proposals on a rolling basis. Polish teams wishing to partner up with colleagues from Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg and Belgium-Flanders are encouraged to carefully read the call text and submit their funding proposals.

OHS in times of digital transformation

Principal Investigator :
Dr hab. Dorota Merecz-Kot
University of Lodz

Panel: HS6

Funding scheme : CHANSE
announced on 9 March 2021

The project has grown out of an interest in the professional trajectory and occupational conditions of individuals who perform work via digital platforms or mobile apps that connect customers to service providers. Digital platform work may involve on-demand services, such as transportation or grocery delivery, or the performance of microtasks, which are small components of a final product, e.g. data encryption, photo tagging, polling. Digital platforms organise work for diverse professional groups, ranging from delivery agents, through nannies and handymen, all the way to highly-skilled finance, project management or IT specialists, etc. It is a dynamically growing industry that attracts increasing numbers of service providers. In 2022 alone, an estimated 28.5 million people across the EU provided services via digital platforms or applications. Platform work seems like a good option for those who appreciate flexibility, allowing them to work at a time and place of their choosing. The price of freedom, however, is the risk that comes with the lack of labour protection and social welfare, the need to provide services at bare minimum prices and the lack of effective mechanisms to protect workers against fraud or extortion. Platform work has been largely under the radar of legal regulations, including those related to occupational health and safety (OHS).

Prof. Dorota Merecz-Kot, photo by Michał ŁepeckiProf. Dorota Merecz-Kot, photo by Michał Łepecki The goal of this project is to investigate how platform work is organised in different EU countries. What are the OHS risks faced by platform workers? How does the platform work environment affect their well-being (mental and physical health)? We want to collect quantitative and qualitative data in order to analyse the similarities and differences between different countries and create a European map of trends in the sharing economy. At the core of the project is a prospective study of platform workers in Poland, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Great Britain, made up of interviews and online questionnaires.

Our second goal is to promote solutions to support better occupational health and safety of platform workers. To this end, we will study how platform managers perceive OHS conditions and analyse platform features that guarantee a healthy work environment, as well as OHS regulations and platform challenges for employers. We will also survey system-level solutions and good practices adopted in partner countries, define the areas for improvement and set the direction we should follow in order to maintain and strengthen the health potential of European workers in the sharing economy.

The achievement of these goals will generate new insights, which can be used by decision-makers, companies and trade unions to create OHS guidelines for platform work.

 

 

 

Project title: New challenges for occupational safety and health in times of the digital transformation in Europe: the role of digital labour platforms

Dr hab. Dorota Merecz-Kot

Kierownik - dodatkowe informacje

Psychologist, professor at the University of Łódź. Merecz-Kot is interested in the relationship between occupational conditions, stress, trauma and physical health, as well as correlations between mental health and human functioning in professional and private life. She creates and implements prevention programmes to help avoid workplace issues such as stress overload, mobbing and sexual harassment. She also participates in international mental health and occupational safety projects.

Prof. Dorota Merecz-Kot, photo by Michał Łepecki

CrossFIT: Crossing Frontiers in electricity prIce forecasting

Principal Investigator :
Prof. Dr hab. Rafał Weron
Wroclaw University of Science and Technology

Panel: HS4

Funding scheme : MAESTRO 10
announced on 15 June 2018

Electricity price forecasting is a branch of forecasting at the intersection of economics/statistics, computer science and electrical engineering that focuses on predicting prices in wholesale electricity markets. Its origins date back to the early 1990s, when power sector deregulation led to the introduction of competitive markets in the UK and Scandinavia. The changes spread quickly, and today in many countries worldwide electricity is traded under market rules.

Prof. Rafał Weron, photo by Michał ŁepeckiProf. Rafał Weron, photo by Michał Łepecki Over the last 25 years, a variety of methods and ideas have been tried for forecasting electricity prices. However, the unprecedented expansion of renewable generation and active demand side management on one hand, and machine learning advances as well as increases in computing power on the other, have provided the impetus and - much-needed - technical opportunities to cross the frontiers of today's electricity price forecasting.

It is the aim of the CrossFIT project to go beyond the state-of-the-art and bring electricity price forecasting to a new level. The research is being carried out in international collaboration (Germany, the Netherlands, USA) along four directions.

The first is based on recent advances in deep learning (i.e., the use of multilayer neural nets) and statistical learning (e.g., regularization algorithms that penalize overfitting and favor parsimonious models) to provide better performing models, able to extract useful information in the era of Big Data (i.e. big and complex data sets). In the project, we have already developed the LQRA model, which uses LASSO method to automatically select variables in quantile regression, thus solving the problem of the method's vulnerability to low quality predictors. In collaboration with researchers from Carnegie Mellon, we have also developed the NBEATSx deep neural network architecture, which allows for the interpretability of its components. The latter is of great practical importance and in line with the "eXplainable AI" (XAI) trend.

Prof. Rafał Weron, photo by Michał ŁepeckiProf. Rafał Weron, photo by Michał Łepecki The second direction uses the latest concepts of averaging forecasts of the same or different models across a set of calibration windows. In collaboration with researchers from the Delft University of Technology, we have developed a set of best practices and provided open-access Python (one of the most popular programming languages) codes for two competitive benchmarks that use averaging, so that new algorithms can be rigorously evaluated in future studies. In addition, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Duisburg-Essen, we have tested new approaches to averaging probabilistic forecasts, i.e., forecasts of entire distributions.

The third direction concerns trajectory (or ensemble) forecasts, where the difficulty lies mainly in the complexity of the econometric apparatus needed to develop forecasting models and tools for assessing these de facto multivariate predictions. In the project, we have proposed methods that make use of copulas (high-dimensional distribution function used to describe the dependance between random variables) to transform probabilistic into trajectory forecasts.

Finally, the fourth direction concerns looking at prediction errors from a completely different perspective. The focus is not on the errors themselves, but on the financial impact of these errors. The universal trading strategies developed in the project make it possible to assess what is really important for companies. In particular, we were able to show that strategies based on probabilistic forecasts lead to much higher profits than those based on point forecasts and, interestingly, can achieve profits that are very close to the theoretical maximum — the "oracle" strategy, according to which everything is always bought at the lowest price of the day and sold at the highest.

For more information on the project, visit the website of the Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence.

Project title: Crossing Frontiers in electricity prIce forecasTing (CrossFIT)

Prof. Dr hab. Rafał Weron

Kierownik - dodatkowe informacje

Professor of Management Science, member of the Academia Europaea, and Head of the Department of Operations Research and Business Intelligence at the Wrocław University of Science and Technology. He is one of the leading world experts in energy forecasting.

He introduced Quantile Regression Averaging (QRA) into the literature and business practice, which was later used by two winning teams in the Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2014, and the interpretable NBEATSx deep neural net architecture for forecasting electricity prices, which was named one of Deep Tech's top five development directions by Forbes magazine in 2023.

But perhaps his most important achievement is a "series" of three review articles on electricity price forecasting that promote rigorous use of methods, error metrics, and statistical tests. The 2014 article received the Emerald Citation of Excellence Award and the International Institute of Forecasters Award, and all three are listed as Highly Cited Papers in the Web of Science.  

Prof. Rafał Weron, photo by Michał Łepecki

JPND 2024

Kod CSS i JS

4 January 2024

The National Science Centre (NCN), in cooperation with the JPND network (EU Joint Programme – Neurodegenerative Disease Research), is pleased to announce a call for international research projects with the aim of improving the understanding of disease mechanisms and advancing measurability of disease progression at early and pre-symptomatic stages of neurodegenerative diseases.

The title of the JPND Call 2024: Mechanisms and measurement of disease progression in the early phase of neurodegenerative diseases.

Funding proposals may be submitted by international consortia composed of at least 3 (and no more than 7) research teams from at least 3 countries participating in the call. The principal investigator of the Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree.

Countries participating in the call: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey

Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the NCN Council has decided that proposals submitted to NCN calls must not provide for any collaboration between Polish and Russian entities. Where such collaboration is planned, the proposal may be rejected.

The application procedure:

Stage I:

Joint pre-proposals must be submitted to the electronic submission system of the JPND network. At this stage, Polish applicants submit no documents to the NCN.

Stage II:

  • International level: a joint full proposal drafted by the Polish research teams in cooperation with the foreign partners (in English) and submitted to the electronic submission system of the JPND network.
  • National level: an NCN proposal concerning the Polish part of the project drafted by the Polish research team and submitted to the NCN electronically via the OSF electronic submission system within 7 days of the joint full proposal submission date at international level.

Call Timeline:

  • Submission deadline for joint pre-proposals: 5 March 2024, 12 noon CET
  • Call for joint full proposals: May 2024
  • Submission deadline for joint full proposals: 25 June 2024, 12 noon CEST
  • Submission deadline for NCN proposals in OSF: 2 July 2024
  • Call results: October 2024

Under JPND Call 2024, funds can be awarded for salaries of the research team members, salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and other costs crucial to the research project.

The total funding allocated by the NCN for research tasks to be performed by the Polish research teams under the call is EUR 1,000,000.

The EUR budget for the Polish part of the research project in the joint proposal must be calculated according to the following exchange rate: EUR 1 = PLN 4.3334.

Please read:

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Who may apply for NCN funding?

Proposals in the call may be submitted by entities specified in the Act on the National Science Centre, 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 2020, item 1796, as amended),
  4. research institutes operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws 2020, item 1383, as amended),
  5. international research institutes established pursuant to other acts and acting 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 2020, item 2098),

5b. institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network,

  1. Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences,
  2. other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis (other than set forth in sections 1-6),
  3. 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),
  4. scientific and industrial centres laid down in the Act on Research Centres of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws 2020, item 1383, as amended),
  5. research centres of the Polish Academy of Sciences laid down in the Act on the Polish Academy of Sciences of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws 2020, item 1796),
  6. scientific libraries,
  7. companies operating as R&D centres laid down in the Act on Certain Forms of Support for Innovation Activities of 30 May 2008 (Journal of Laws 2021, item 706),
  8. legal entities with registered office in Poland,

13a. President of the Central Office of Measures,

  1. natural persons and
  2. companies conducting research in other organisational form than set forth in sections 1-13a.

Under JPND Call 2024, NCN proposals must not be submitted by entities for which funding constitutes state aid.

If research projects are carried out by two or more Polish partners applying for NCN funding, they must set up a group of entities (see item 8 above) and as such submit NCN proposals. NCN proposals are submitted by a leader named in the research project cooperation agreement concluded by the group of entities. An institution employing the principal investigator acts as the leader of the group of entities.

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

A template agreement on the formation of a group of entities for the purposes of completion of the research project.

Who may act as a principal investigator?

The principal investigator of the Polish research team must hold at least a PhD degree when submitting a proposal. Restrictions on submitting NCN proposals are described in detail in Chapter IV of the Terms and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO, annexed to NCN Council Resolution No 32/2023 of 16 March 2023.

What are the subjects covered by the call?

Proposals submitted to the call (Mechanisms and measurement of disease progression in the early phase of neurodegenerative diseases) must focus on one or several of the following neurodegenerative diseases:

  • Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias,
  • Parkinson’s disease and PD‐related disorders,
  • Prion diseases,
  • Motor neuron diseases,
  • Huntington’s disease,
  • Spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA),
  • Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

The subjects of the call cover research in the following areas:

  • Unraveling the influence of molecular, physiological, psychological and social factors and pathways on disease progression as well as discovering new factors and pathways;
  • Defining key regulatory steps affecting the disease onset and progression;
  • Combining molecular, psychological, social and physiological markers in order to increase the robustness of the diagnosis;
  • Harmonization of the use of novel technologies and clinical measures to increase reliability and reproducibility of disease detection and monitoring;
  • Identifying molecular, environmental, social and behavioural modulators of disease progression with the ultimate aim of determining risk, protective and resilience factors;
  • Examining pathological processes related to neurodegeneration by using Artificial Intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies to understand the role of mechanistic pathways;
  • Enhancing patient stratification by establishing measures and technologies to characterize clinical subgroups at pre-symptomatic stages, e.g. ‘risk phenotypes’ or ‘at-risk’ groups;
  • Identifying compensatory mechanisms associated to early stages of neurodegenerative diseases;
  • Systematically analysing the influence of genetic, epigenetic and phenotypic variability underlying neurodegenerative diseases on disease progression.

More information on the subject of the call can be found in the call text of JPND Call 2024.

Polish researchers may apply for NCN funding of their basic research projects for the purposes of Article 2 (1) of the NCN Act.

NCN proposals comprising research tasks overlapping with research tasks laid down in another proposal that has been already submitted in any NCN call or with respect to which an appeal has been initiated, may only be submitted once the funding decision has become final.

What is the project duration period?

Research projects may be planned in the call for a period of either 24 or 36 months.

What are the positions for members of the research team?

Apart from the principal investigator, research tasks may be performed by co-investigators, including students, PhD students and post-docs.

A post-doc type position is a full-time position, scheduled by the project’s principal investigator for a person who has been conferred a PhD degree within 7 years prior to the year of employment in the project. This period may be extended pursuant to the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

Persons employed as post-docs must have their PhD degree awarded by another institution than the one employing them at this post or must have completed a continuous and evidenced post-doctoral fellowship of at least 10 months in another institution than the host institution for the project and in another country than the one in which they have been conferred a PhD degree. Persons employed as post-docs in the project must be recruited in an open call procedure.

PhD students who are NCN-scholarship grantees must be recruited in an open call procedure.

An international expert team will review the relevance of involvement of particular members of the research team in the project. The competences and tasks to be performed by particular members of the research team must be described in the proposal. For more information on the budget for salaries and scholarships, please read the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.  

The terms of the call do not specify the maximum number of research team members.

Scholarship grantees and post-docs must not be named in either joint or NCN proposals.

How should the project budget be planned?

The project budget must be justified as regards the subject and scope of research and based on realistic calculations. The budget must include expenditures eligible for funding from NCN resources (the so-called eligible costs).

The terms of the call do not specify the minimum or maximum (total) funds that may be requested.

The budget in the NCN proposal must be quoted in PLN, while the budget in the joint proposal, in EUR.

The EUR budget for the Polish part of the research project in the joint proposal must be calculated according to the following exchange rate: EUR 1 = PLN 4.3334.

The project budget (eligible costs) includes direct and indirect costs.

Direct costs include:

  1. remuneration for the principal investigator;
  2. remuneration for co-investigators in the project:
  • full-time remuneration for post-docs,
  • salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students,
  • the so-called additional remuneration for members of the research team. If the principal investigator is not to be employed full-time in the project, his/her remuneration is paid from the pool allocated for additional remuneration;
  1. purchase of research equipment, devices and software;
  2. purchase of material and small equipment;
  3. outsourced services;
  4. business trips, visits and consultations;
  5. compensation for collective investigators and
  6. other costs crucial to the project according to the Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

The costs of publication of monographs (as defined in §10 of the Regulation on Evaluation of the Quality of Research Activity passed by the Minister of Science and Higher Education on 22 February 2019 (Journal of Laws 2019, item 392) resulting from research projects may only be incurred following a positive review by the NCN.

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.

The costs of open access to publications may only be incurred as indirect costs. The cost of open access planned as direct costs will be regarded as a formal error.

Where unjustified costs are planned, the proposal may be rejected.

More information on the costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre in international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

We recommend that Polish applicants should consult the budget table of the Polish part of the project with the NCN. The budget table in .xlsx format should be sent to alicja.dylag@ncn.gov.pl by 23 February 2024.

Open Access publication of research results

Together with other European cOAlition S agencies, the National Science Centre has drafted its Open Access Policy. In accordance with its vision of open access to research results and publications, the NCN requires that all research results should be made available in full and immediate open access. In accordance with the principles of Plan S, 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 (hybrid journals in which some of the articles are open access and some require payment of a publication fee), as long as the Version of Record (VoR, i.e. a version of record published in a journal with its own typeface and branding. Other terms: published version or publisher’s pdf) or the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM, i.e. the final manuscript version created by the author, including all the revisions introduced after the peer review, and accepted for publication in the journal. Other terms: post print, author accepted manuscript) is published, by the author or publisher, in an open repository immediately upon the article’s online publication;
  3. publication in journals covered by an open access licence within the framework of so-called transformative agreements that must be inscribed in the Efficiency and Standards for Article Charges registry (ESAC-registry) and in transformative journals (i.e. journals actively committed to transitioning from a subscription journal to a fully open access journal. The current list of transformative journals is available here). Transformative journals must meet the criteria laid down in the Guidelines on the Implementation of Plan S and must allow open access publication of original scientific articles.

This publication route only applies to articles accepted for publication or published before 31 December 2024.

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.

We also encourage to read the Open Access Instructions.

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 made available in the repository, according to the Creative Commons Public Domain CC0 licence (that allows the distribution of data to public domain. Pursuant to the licence, authors can give up their intellectual property rights to the extend allowed by domestic law; the licence does not affect patent rights, rights of publicity or privacy). 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.

Can proposals in this call include application for state aid?

State aid must not be requested under JPND Call 2024.

You can find out more about state aid here.

What is the proposal evaluation procedure?

Joint proposals are subject to an eligibility check performed by the NCN, other agencies participating in the JPND Call 2024 and the Secretariat of JPND Call 2024.

Joint proposals that have passed the eligibility check are subject to a merit-based evaluation carried out by an international expert team pursuant to the terms set forth in the call text.

NCN proposals are subject solely to an NCN eligibility check carried out by the scientific coordinators.

The eligibility check of NCN proposals involves verification of proposal for completeness, compliance with all terms set forth in the call documents and Resolution No 32/2023 of the NCN Council of 16 March 2023, including compliance of the budget with the Annex thereto, i.e. “Costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre in international calls carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO”.

The information provided in NCN proposals and in joint proposals must be consistent and identical.

Who performs the merit-based evaluation of proposals?

Only joint proposals are subject to a merit-based evaluation performed by an international expert team established by the JPND network. For more information on the evaluation of proposals, please go to the call text available at the website of the JPND network.

When and how will the results be announced?

The JPND Call 2024 will be concluded in October 2024. Firstly, project coordinators will be notified of the outcome. Polish research teams will be notified of the results by way of a decision of the NCN Director.

In the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements related to actions performed by the NCN, the applicants may lodge an appeal against the decision of the NCN Director with the Committee of Appeals of the NCN Council.

Where can additional information be found?

For more information on the call, please go to the website of the JPND network. The terms and regulations on awarding NCN funding in the call are set forth in the Annex to NCN Council Resolution No 32/2023.

Should you have any questions or queries, please contact us by phone or by e-mail:

Useful information

If you are intending to submit a proposal to JPND Call 2024, please read:

  1. all call documents, in particular:
  1. call text of JPND Call 2024 on the website of the JPND network;
  2. terms and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO.

National level: before an NCN proposal is submitted to the NCN:

  1. obtain data from the applicant required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal and performance of the research project (project costs, procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal); if a group of Polish entities applies for funding, draft a research project cooperation agreement;
  2. make sure that the information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Checking the proposal for completeness in OSF with the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button does not guarantee that all information entered is correct and the required annexes have been attached;
  3. make sure that respective tabs are completed in the correct language;
  4. disable the final version of the proposal to the NCN and
  5. download the confirmation of proposal submission which must be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the host institution.

Once the proposal has been completed and the required annexes attached, use the Wyślij do NCN [Send to NCN] button to submit the proposal to the NCN electronically via the OSF submission system.

Once the call for proposals has been closed:

  1. proposals will be evaluated;
  2. if a proposal is recommended for funding, a funding agreement will be entered into;
  3. the project will be performed pursuant to the funding agreement and Regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO;

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.

Call documents

The JPND network:

The call documents required from all applicants are available at the website of the JPND network.

The National Science Centre:

  1. Terms and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks funded or co-funded under international calls launched by the National Science Centre and carried out as multilateral collaboration UNISONO
  2. Budget table of the Polish research team
  3. NCN Review panels
  4. Regulations for awarding scholarships in NCN-funded research projects
  5. NCN proposal form template
  6. Research project cooperation agreement  (mandatory if a group of entities applies)
  7. State aid in JPND 2024  
  8. State aid rules
  9. Guidelines for applicants to complete NCN proposals in the OSF submission system
  10. NCN proposal submission procedure in OSF
  11. Guidelines for applicants to complete the data management plan form in the proposal
  12. Guidelines for applicants to complete the ethics issues form in the proposal
  13. NCN’s Open Access Policy, as amended.
  14. Instructions: Open Access Policy
  15. Code of the National Science Centre on research integrity and applying for research funding
  16. NCN’s position on collaboration with the Russian Federation within the framework of NCN-funded grants

Documents concerning evaluation of proposals:

  1. Service of decisions of the NCN Director
  2. Guidelines for appealing against the NCN Director’s decisions

Documents to read before starting an NCN project:

  1. Agreement template (Agreement template for winners of the previous Era-Net call launched by the NCN – draft version that may be amended when the agreement is signed with the NCN)
  2. Procedure of conducting audits on host institution premises
  3. Guidelines for entities auditing the implementation of research projects funded by the National Science Centre
  4. Evaluation of monographs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre