A list of experts who evaluated proposals submitted to the following calls of the National Science Centre in 2023 as Expert Team members:

• MAESTRO 14, SONATA BIS 12 launched on 15 June 2022;
• OPUS 24 + LAP / WEAVE, PRELUDIUM BIS 4, SONATA 18, POLONEZ BIS 3 launched on 15 September 2022;
• SONATINA 7, SHENG 3 launched on 15 December 2022;
• MINIATURA 7 launched on 1 February 2023;
• OPUS 25, PRELUDIUM 22 launched 15 March 2023.

List of experts in alphabetical order

List of experts in alphabetical order: MINIATURA 7

We wish to acknowledge all the Experts for their commitment and contribution in the evaluation of proposals submitted to the above calls for proposals.

At a press conference held on 14 February, the Minister of Science, Dariusz Wieczorek, announced his decision to increase the 2024 NCN budget by 200 million zlotys.

“We know that the NCN has had serious problems with funding in recent years. I'd like to tell you that I have decided to increase its research-funding budget by 200 million zlotys”, Dariusz Wieczorek said. He also stressed that the “decision had already been announced and agreed on with the Minister of Finance during the budget presentation”.

Press conference at the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, featuring Minister Dariusz Wieczorek, Deputy Minister Maciej Gdula, and NCN Director Krzysztof Jóźwiak. Photo by Anna Korzekwa-Józefowicz The Minister affirmed that he would also press for higher subsidies in the coming years. “We want to persuade the Polish government and the Minister of Finance to continue increasing the NCN grant year after year”, he added.

Dr hab. Maciej Gdula, Deputy Minister of Science, who was also present at the press conference, hailed the NCN budget increase and the announcement of pay rises for researchers as a moment of “historic change”. “This opens up an entirely new chapter in the treatment of research”, he said.

The additional 200 million will come from the budget of the Ministry of Science.

“This is a very good decision. We will use these resources to fund many valuable projects”, Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak, NCN Director, commented on the plan.

Asked how the extra sum would be allocated between different NCN calls, the director said that they still needed “more time for analysis”. “I can also promise we will be able to launch many projects that have ended up on waiting lists in previous calls”, he asserted.

At the press conference, Prof. Krzysztof Jóźwiak also thanked researchers who have supported the NCN for many months and repeatedly appealed for its budget to be increased. He also mentioned the grassroots social media initiative, #NCNtoTlen, within the framework of which researchers describe research projects they have been able to pursue thanks to NCN funding. “We see that as really important support”, he said.

Join us for a webinar organised by the National Science Centre within the framework of Love Data Week 2024. Held on 14 February under the slogan of “My Kind of Data”, the session will be focused on Polish research data management infrastructures and services.

During the webinar, representatives from various Polish infrastructures will present their portfolios and discuss research data management opportunities offered by Polish institutions. You will find out about the target groups of specific infrastructures and services and learn how you can help carry out various research projects. You are also strongly encouraged to ask questions during our Q&A session.

Below, more information about the event:

Speakers:

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Aneta Pazik-Aybar, Narodowe Centrum Nauki, EOSC;

Maciej Piasecki, Wrocław University of Technology (WUT), CLARIN-PL

Roksana Wilk, Cyfronet AGH Academic Computer Centre, PLGrid;

Magdalena Szuflita-Żurawska, Gdańsk University of Technology, Data Bridge;

Wojciech Fenrich, Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling, University of Warsaw, RepOD;

Magdalena Wnuk, Digital Humanities Centre, Institute of Literary Research, PAS, OPERAS PL;

Raimundas Tuminauskas, Poznań Supercomputing and Networking Centre.

Agenda:

• 12:00-12:05 Introduction
• 12:05-12:20 EOSC: Research data management in Europe
• 12:20-12:35 CLARIN-PL Language Technology Centre – open research infrastructure for European researchers
• 12:35-12:50 PLGrid Computational infrastructure for Polish science
• 12:50-13:05 DATA BRIDGE as a trustworthy research data repository
• 13:05-13:20 RepOD Repository of Open Data
• 13:20-13:35  OPERAS infrastructure for open science communication
• 13:35-13:50 Digital Infrastructures
• 13:50-14:30 Q&A (only for those participating via Clickmeeting)

Booking not required. Join the webinar HERE

The event will also be streamed live on the YouTube channel of the NCN:

We are pleased to announce that the Czech agency GAČR will conduct a call for proposals under the Weave programme between 9 February 2024 to 3 April 2024, with the Czech agency acting as the lead agency.

Please note that under the Weave-UNISONO call, if a joint proposal is submitted to GAČR, an NCN proposal must be submitted electronically via the OSF submission system as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to GAČR, by 10 April 2024, 23:59 p.m. at the latest.

Once the work on the NCN proposal has started in the OSF submission system, the Polish research team has 45 calendar days to complete the proposal and submit it to the NCN. After that, the proposal can no longer be edited, in which case a Polish research team that has not sent its proposal to the NCN must prepare a new proposal and complete it in the OSF submission system.

Come attend a webinar entitled Polish research data management infrastructures and services.

This year, the National Science Centre decided to join the event, which will be dedicated to Polish research data management infrastructures and services. The following infrastructure representatives will take part in the event organised by the NCN:

• Gdańsk University of Technology (Data Bridge),
• Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computer Modelling, University of Warsaw (RePOD),
• Cyfronet AGH Academic Computer Centre (PLGrid),
• Digital Humanities Centre, Institute of Literary Research, PAS (OPERAS-PL),
• CLARIN-PL Centre for Language Technologies, Wrocław University of Technology (CLARIN-PL).

The meeting is organised within the framework of Love Data Week, an annual initiative aimed at highlighting the importance of research data management and raising the awareness of good practices in data management, sharing, storage and reuse. The event is organised in Valentine’s Week.

Love Data Week was established in 2016. First launched in the US, it soon grew into an international event during which a broad community of institutions, organisations, scientists, students and other data lovers come together to promote due diligence in the treatment of research data.

The main slogan of this year’s Love Data Week is “My Kind of Data”.

In the first quarter of 2024 the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) will launch the MAPS call. The programme will provide funding for projects carried out by Polish researchers in collaboration with partners from Switzerland, as well as Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Romania.

MAPS is a multilateral initiative that promotes knowledge circulation by providing cross-border collaboration opportunities. The programme aims at increasing the competitiveness in the European Research Area and responds to the scientific community’s demand for more international integration and cooperation with colleagues based in Switzerland as well as Central Europe.

MAPS is a part of the second Swiss contribution to selected EU member states. The programme is operated by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) which cooperates with research funders in Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.

Joint Research Projects

MAPS will be implemented through joint research projects involving at least one applicant based in Switzerland and two to five additional applicants from two to five of the participating EU-13 countries. Each project is carried out at the research facilities available at the institutions which join the research consortium, while reciprocal visits and short stays may also be supported. An online partner search tool was made available to support partnership formation (link: https://roch.brokerage.uefiscdi-direct.ro/)  

The maximum amount of funding for each team in each country is 350,000 francs for four years. All costs of the Polish part of the project are covered by SNSF. The call is not co-funded by NCN or other Polish institutions.

The research projects have a duration of between 36 and 48 months.

The call for proposals will be open to all research areas.

Eligibility

The project must be submitted by a Swiss applicant in the SNSF’s electronic submission system mySNF. It is not necessary to submit the application in the OSF system. Merit based and financial details concerning the Polish side of the partnership must be completed by the Swiss PI in mySNF.

The Polish Principal Investigators must meet the following criteria:

• have obtained their PhD at least 4 years prior to the submission deadline;
• be scientifically independent researchers and be able to lead the project team;
• be employed under an employment contract at an eligible research institution for the duration of the whole project, giving them access to the relevant research infrastructure.

The Polish Principal Investigator must be employed under an employment contract throughout the duration of the project in a Polish institution. Enterprises are ineligible as applicants.

The call is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2024. Further information will follow in due course.

On 5 March 2024, M-ERA.NET will launch a new call for international research projects addressing materials research and innovation to support the European Green Deal and Sustainable Development Goals.

For more information on the call, please go to the website of the M-ERA.NET programme.

This preannouncement is for your information only. The terms of the call will be laid down in the call text.

Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, Chair of the NCN Committee for Regulations and Procedures, discusses the most important mechanisms of the NCN, including its call procedure, expert evaluation process, reviews and final assessments, in an article just published in “Forum Akademickie”.

Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek, photo: Piotr Szałański/NCN Prof. Joanna Golińska-Pilarek has sat on the NCN Council since 2018. In her article, she explains selected mechanisms at play in our agency, with a special emphasis on the proposal review procedure. She also discusses some of the postulates raised by the research community with respect to changes in the operation of the NCN and debunks several public misconceptions.

As for expert review, prof. Golińska-Pilarek explains how teams charged with proposal assessment are appointed and why, when resubmitted, a proposal may get a completely different score even if it has been modified in line with the suggestions of previous reviewers:

“(Expert) Teams are set up independently for each call. Of course, some experts may be appointed under (no more than three) consecutive calls. However, we do our utmost to change team composition regularly, if only to make sure our experts are a good match for the subject matter of the proposals submitted to each call. Another important reason is that we want to make sure proposals that were rejected previously are not evaluated by the same people once again. And, lastly, some experts simply refuse to join our team in successive calls. The annual statistics are really impressive: in 2022 alone, we appointed 2,100 experts and reviews were prepared by more than 11,000 external reviewers.

It is important to keep in mind that a proposal is evaluated against other proposals submitted under the same call. There is no institutional memory at play here. Experts do not have access to any proposals submitted in earlier iterations. As a matter of principle, they are also not informed whether or not the proposal is submitted for the first time. When resubmitted, the proposal is usually evaluated by different people than before and the final decision is taken by a different team. The pool of proposals against which it needs to compete is also completely different. This is why the final assessment may differ widely from the original one, and sometimes may be more negative, even if the proposal has been modified in line with the suggestions provided by reviewers in an earlier iteration of the call.”

The article also explains whether additional assessment criteria may be added and how applicants can appeal against a negative funding decision.

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.