Experienced researchers, scientists who wish to establish new research teams, and those planning to carry out a project in cooperation with Lithuanian partners – these are the addressees of the recently announced MAESTRO 12, SONATA BIS 10 and DAINA 2 calls with a total budget of 180 million PLN.

DAINA is a joint initiative of the National Science Centre and the Research Council of Lithuania (RCL), targeted at Polish research teams that wish to submit a research proposal together with a Lithuanian partner. They will be eligible to receive funding for salaries, including scholarsips for students and PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, as well as other costs related to the Polish part of the project. The total budget slated for Polish research teams equals 10 million PLN,

“DAINA 2 involves a parallel review process, which means that the NCN and the RCL will both conduct a parallel eligibility check and merit-based evaluation, and only projects recommended by both agencies will qualify for funding”, says Professor Zbigniew Błocki, NCN Director, “The first edition of the call attracted a lot of interest and confirmed that there is a demand for initiatives that aim to strengthen the Polish and Lithuanian research potential and develop Polish-Lithuanian research cooperation”, he adds.

June is also traditionally a month when the MAESTRO and SONATA BIS calls are announced. The former is open to advanced researchers who wish to conduct pioneering, sometimes interdisciplinary, research that goes beyond the current state of our knowledge. To qualify as a principal investigator in a MAESTRO project, applicants must be at least PhD holders with papers published in renowned Polish and/or foreign academic press/ journals in the last 10 years. In addition, they are expected to have carried out at least two other research projects selected within NCN or international calls for proposals. The MAESTRO call is entering its twelfth edition and has a total budget of 20 million PLN.

SONATA BIS is targeted at researchers with a PhD degree earned 5 to 12 years prior to the submission of the proposal. The objective of the call is to support the establishment of new research teams to conduct basic research. The funding can go toward the costs of research team salaries, including scholarships for students and PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, as well as other necessary project expenses. The total budget of SONATA BIS 10 is 150 million PLN.

Proposals in all three calls must be submitted via the OSF system by 4 pm on 15 September 2020. Detailed information can be found on the website of the National Science Centre.

The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange announces a new programme – NAWA Chair. The programme offers universities and other scientific institutions a long-term financial package from NAWA that will cover the stay of a foreign scientist of world renown as well as funding for fundamental research, which will be financed by the National Science Centre.

The objective of the NAWA Chair programme is to support outstanding scientific and research as well as teaching activity of Polish academic and scientific entities.

‘The prestigious grants awarded under the NAWA Chair programme will be a form of supporting the strategy of internationalising Polish higher education and science by means of a long-term financial package,’ explains Prof. Wojciech Maksymowicz, deputy minister of science and higher education. ‘A long-lasting effect of participating in the programme will be establishing a research team whose scientific and teaching achievements will greatly increase the renown of Polish entities and the scientific disciplines they represent at home and abroad,’ the minister adds.

The first edition of the programme is directed at higher education institutions and other scientific entities which carry out research in the areas of humanities as well as social and theological sciences. The next editions of the programme in the following years will be dedicated to other scientific disciplines.

‘NAWA’s new programme makes it possible to invite to Poland world-class foreign scientists who work in the relevant disciplines. They will be hired as guest professors for a period between three and four years. In this time, as outstanding scientists they can become the hearts of strong scientific teams, do breakthrough research and help the entities apply for international grants,’ says NAWA Director Dr Grażyna Żebrowska.

A grant funded by NAWA can amount to as much as PLN 3 mln. It will cover the costs of the guest professor’s and their research teams’ remuneration as well as the professor’s mobility expenses. In addition, higher education establishments and other scientific institutions can apply for funds for fundamental research from the National Science Centre (NCN) in the form of the so called research component.

‘Analyses of the efficiency of similar programmes in Europe indicate quite clearly that it is crucial to enable the incoming scientists to begin research work as soon as possible after their arrival,’ says Prof. Małgorzata Kossowska, president of the NCN Council. ‘Of course we expect that the scientists will obtain funds for research through regular Polish and foreign grants. We are aware, however, that this will take considerable time. That is why we have decided to finance the ‘starting package’, which enables the teams to commence intense research works right away,’ Prof. Kossowska adds.

Applications under the programme can be submitted from 1 June 2020 until 31 July 2020. They may be submitted solely through NAWA’s electronic application submission system.

Projects under the programme have to begin: no earlier than on 1 February 2021 and no later than on 31 October 2021.

The announcement of the call for applications as well as other documents can be found here. 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA) carefully monitors the situation related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on mobility between states. If any projects cannot be completed within the planned time limits, NAWA will adjust their schedules to the current situation, taking into account the safety of NAWA beneficiaries as well as Polish citizens.

We wish to invite you to a webinar on the rules of submitting grant applications and completing projects under the NAWA Chair programme. The webinar will be held on 9 June 2020 from 2 to 3 p.m. (Polish language)

Registration LINK 

In relation to the NCN Council's support of the NCN Director's measures to introduce an open access policy to research results obtained in research projects funded or co-funded from public sources (hereafter referred to as the "Open Access Policy"), we have the pleasure of announcing that the Open Access Policy was adopted by Order No 40/2020 of the Director of the National Science Centre of 31 May 2020.

The Open Access Policy was modelled on the postulates of Plan S and will also be adopted, in a similar form, by other members of cOAlition S. The document enters into force on the day of signing and shall apply to calls announced on 15 June this year and projects based on implementation  agreements signed after 1 January 2021.

The Open Access Policy provides information on the publication paths that meet the compliance criteria of Plan S, as well as cost eligibility, licensing and copyright protection, and a timetable of changes in the validity of certain provisions.

The last paragraph of the document introduces a new tool created by JISC, the Journal Checker Tool, which will soon allow researchers to make sure that publishing an article in a journal of their choice complies with the Open Access Policy under one of the three available publication paths. For the time being, the tool is not available, but is scheduled for release in November this year. Some other links listed in the Open Access Policy may also still be inactive due to updates related to the dynamic publishing situation. However, complete information should soon be provided.

OPEN ACCESS POLICY AT THE NCN

We are pleased to announce the next edition of the call for proposals under which researchers will receive funding for single research activities to develop future research projects. The total budget earmarked for the call is 15 million PLN.

MINIATURA 4 announcement

Under the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals, researchers can carry out preliminary and pilot studies, library and archive searches, fellowships, research visits and consultations. The call is open to researchers who have been conferred their PhD degree within 12 years before the proposal submission year and are employed by the applicant pursuant to an employment contract. Research activities to be carried out must fit the definition of basic research, i.e. empirical or theoretical research work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundations of phenomena and observable facts. Research activities may be planned for a period of up to 12 months and the amount of financing must range from 5 thousand PLN to 50 thousand PLN. Researchers intending to submit their proposals must meet certain conditions, e.g. they cannot have been the principal investigators in any of the projects funded by the NCN or a winning applicant of a call for doctoral scholarships or fellowships launched by the NCN.

The MINIATURA 4 call for proposals is be carried out on an ongoing basis and proposals may be submitted via the OSF submission system between 1 June and 30 September 2020. The call for proposals may be suspended if the total amount of requested funding has exceeded twice the amount of funding allocated by the NCN Council for research activities under this edition of the call. This is why, it is best to submit proposals earlier. The proposal evaluation procedure has been simplified. Proposals will undergo a single-stage evaluation, which is why the results will be known within 4 months of the proposal submission date. Moreover, the tasks can be undertaken faster; the general terms of the agreement are included in the proposal which is why the work can be undertaken immediately once the funding decision has become final. 

The detailed information can be found in the MINIATURA 4 call announcement.

Join our info chat on 28 May 2020 at 12.00 (CEST) during which we will answer your questions on the POLS call. The chat will be held in English and will last for one hour. It will be open to all researchers concerned. You can join the chat by clicking on https://ncn.clickmeeting.com/pols

The POLS call for research projects to be carried out by incoming researchers in Polish research institutions or enterprises is open till 16 June 2020, 4 p.m.

Once again, we are pleased to announce the results of three flagship calls for proposals: OPUS, PRELUDIUM and SONATA and for the first time, the results of the PRELUDIUM BIS call addressed to PhD students. Researchers submitted 4524 proposals, for a total of over 3.2 billion PLN, under the calls. Experts recommended 809 projects for funding, with a total value of 667 745 974 PLN, of which, on average, 18% will be funded.

The objective of the PRELUDIUM BIS scheme is to support PhD student education by funding scholarships and research projects conducted by researchers at the beginning of their research career as part of their PhD dissertation, as well as financing 3- to 6-month foreign fellowships to support young researcher mobility. Under the first edition of the call, which is co-launched by the NCN and the National Agency for Academic Exchange (the “NAWA”), 255 proposals were submitted, of which 96 were awarded funding of almost 47 million PLN. The funding will start in October 2020. 

"PRELUDIUM BIS is an elite track for PhD schools that provides an opportunity for stable funding over a period of 4 years during which PhD dissertation can be completed", says Professor Zbigniew Błocki, Director of the NCN, "We were surprised by how few proposals we had received in the first edition of the call as compared to what we had expected. Nevertheless, we are hoping to receive more and more proposals with the new editions of the call coming.”

The OPUS call for proposals is targeted at a wide range of researchers. There are no restrictions on the stage of their research career or research experience. The call has always attracted a lot of attention. The NCN received 2133 proposals for a total of almost 2.2 billion PLN. Following the evaluation procedure, 350 research projects were recommended for funding, totalling to 460 million PLN. Under the PRELUDIUM call for proposals, funding can be pursued by researchers who have not yet earned a PhD degree, while the subject of their project does not have to be related to the subject of their doctoral dissertation. Researchers submitted 1146 proposals for a total of nearly 170 million PLN to eighteenth edition of the call. 205 of them, with a total value of nearly 32 million PLN, were eventually recommended for funding. The SONATA call for proposals is addressed at researchers with a PhD degree conferred to them within 2 to 7 years before the proposal submission year. The purpose of the call is to support researchers at the beginning of their research career who intend to carry out innovative basic research projects using modern research facilities and/or original methodology. 990 proposals were submitted to the fifteenth edition of the call, for a total value of almost 730 million PLN. 158 projects were awarded funding for a total of almost 130 million PLN.

Today, we are sending the funding decisions for proposals that qualify for funding as well as those that do not qualify for funding under the calls. Decisions by the NCN Director in an electronic format are served to the applicant’s e-mail address specified in the proposal. In the case of proposals submitted by entities referred to in Article 27 (1) – (7) and (9) of the NCN Act, decisions by the NCN Director are served to the Electronic Correspondence Register (ESP ePUAP) address specified in the proposal. If natural persons - applicants/principal investigators specify their ePUAP address in the proposal for service of documents, decisions are served to that address. If natural persons - applicants/principal investigators do not specify their ePUAP address in the proposal for service of documents, decisions are served by way of a message with an electronic address sent to the address specified in the proposal, from which the decision by the NCN Director can be downloaded.

Funding decisions by the NCN Director are additionally forwarded to the principal investigator and, if the applicant is a natural person, to the host institution named in the proposal.

If no decision has been received, it is recommended to check whether the ESP (ePUAP) address specified in the proposal is correct and if the address is incorrect, contact the NCN Program Officer in charge of the proposal specified in the ZSUN/OSF system. 

The winning projects under OPUS 18, PRELUDIUM 18, SONATA 15 and PRELUDIUM BIS – ranking lists.

The EXPRESS CALL TO FUND RESEARCH ON COVID-19 announced at the end of March, has just been concluded. The objective of the call was to select projects that would enhance understanding of the mechanisms of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, as well as improving diagnostic tests, finding new drugs and mitigating the social and economic effects of the pandemic. Although it was an express call, the highest evaluation standards were adhered to. Researchers had only 2 weeks to submit their proposals and the two-stage evaluation was performed in just a month. Regardless of this short deadline for submitting proposals, the call attracted a lot attention – which is why it was decided to increase the original budget of PLN 10,000,000. Researchers submitted 262 proposals for a total amount of over PLN 140,000,000, of which 259 proposals were submitted for merit-based evaluation. Funding of over PLN 12,000,000 was awarded to 19 research projects, of which 12 are research projects in Life Sciences, 4 in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and 3 in Physical Sciences and Engineering. You can read more on the conclusion of the Express call to fund research on Covid-19 in the letter of the NCN Management and Council.

The ranking list is available here.

We are pleased to announce that four projects involving Polish researchers have been awarded funding in the NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe) call for proposals. Within the call entitled Democratic governance in a turbulent age  over EUR 17,8 million have been granted to 14 research projects.

Polish projects awarded within the call:

CrimScapes: CrimScapes: Navigating citizenship through European landscapes of criminalisation. Polish Principal Investigator: dr Agata Dziuban, Jagiellonian University in Cracow. The project will involve research teams from Finland, France and Germany.

UNDPOLAR: Threat, identity, and dissent: Understanding and addressing political polarization in European democracies. Polish Principal Investigator: dr Marta Marchlewska, Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The project will involve research teams from Belgium, France, Spain, Netherlands and United Kingdom.

THREATPIE: The Threats and Potentials of a Changing Political Information Environment. Polish Principal Investigator: prof. dr hab. Agnieszka Stępińska, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The project will involve research teams from Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Netherlands, Germany and United Kingdom.

POPBACK: Populist Backlash, Democratic Backsliding and the Crisies of the Rule of Law in the European Union. Polish Principal Investigator: prof. dr hab. Barbara Maria Błaszczyk, Institute of Economics, Polish Academy of Sciences. The project will involve research teams from z Austria, Germany, Slovenia and United Kingdom.

More information and the full list of the projects recommended for funding are available on the NORFACE web page.

Congratulations to all the laureates!

Please remember that under the CEUS-UNISONO call, if a joint proposal is submitted to GAČR as the lead agency, an NCN proposal must be submitted to ZSUN/OSF as soon as possible following the submission of the joint proposal to GAČR, by 11 May 2020, 23:59 p.m. at the latest.

We are announcing the ALPHORN–COVID-19 international bilateral call for Polish-Swiss research projects on COVID-19. The call is organised in cooperation with the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

See the call announcement 

Under the ALPHORN-COVID-19 call, funding will be provided to high-quality ground-breaking research projects on COVID-19, to be carried out jointly by research teams from Poland and Switzerland (bilateral projects), and Polish-Swiss research teams, in cooperation with research teams from one of the following countries: Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Luxembourg and South Tyrol (trilateral project).

The call is organised pursuant to the Lead Agency Procedure. The SNSF will act as the Lead Agency in charge of merit-based evaluation of proposals under the SNSF National Research Programme NRP 78 – COVID-19.

PLN 4 million has been allocated to fund research by the Polish research teams. Funds awarded under the call may be designated to cover remuneration for the research team, scholarships for students or PhD students, purchase or manufacturing of research equipment and for other costs indispensable for research. The principal investigator of the Polish research team must be at least a PhD holder. Research projects can be carried out over a period of 24 months.

Joint proposals drafted in compliance with the requirements of the SNSF must be submitted by the Swiss research teams via SNSF’s electronic submission system mySNSF by 25 May 2020, 5 p.m., while Polish research teams must submit NCN proposals to ZSUN/OSF by 26 May 2020, 4 p.m. NCN proposals must include joint proposals identical to the proposals submitted to the SNSF.

Furthermore, in the case of trilateral projects, each research team involved in the project must submit a funding proposal to the competent research funding institution according to its requirements.

The results will be announced by the end of October 2020. 

Contact persons:

• Dr Aneta Pazik, Coordinator for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, e-mail:  aneta.pazik@ncn.gov.pl
• Dr Jadwiga Spyrka, Coordinator for Life Sciences, e -mail: jadwiga.spyrka@ncn.gov.pl
• Dr Anna Wieczorek, Coordinator for Physical Sciences and Engineering, e-mail:  anna.wieczorek@ncn.gov.pl

General affairs:

• Dr Magdalena Godowska, e-mail: magdalena.godowska@ncn.gov.pl

• Magdalena Dobrzańska-Bzowska, e-mail: Magdalena.Dobrzanska-Bzowska@ncn.gov.pl