Announcement of the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals

Proposals under the call may be submitted by: 

1. Higher Education entities;
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 2019, items 1183, 1655 and 2227);
4. research institute operating pursuant to the Act on Research Institutes of 30 April 2010 (Journal of Laws of 2019, items 1183, 1655 and 2227);
5. international research institute established pursuant to other acts and acting in the Republic of Poland;
6. scientific libraries;
7. Łukasiewicz Centre operating pursuant to the Act on the Łukasiewicz Research Network of 21 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2019, items 534 and 2227) and
8. institute operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network.

A research activity must be carried out by a researcher:

1. who has been conferred their PhD degree after 1 January 2008. This period may be extended by a time of long-term (in excess of 90 days) documented sick leaves or rehabilitation leaves granted on account of being unfit to work. In addition, this period may be extended by the number of months of a child care leave granted pursuant to the Labour Code and in the case of women, by 18 months for every child born or adopted, whichever manner of accounting for career breaks is preferable;
2. who has been employed by the applicant pursuant to an employment contract on the proposal submission date;
3. who has not acted as the principal investigator in any of the projects funded by the NCN;
4. who is not a winning applicant of an ETIUDA call for doctoral scholarships or a call for fellowships (including FUGA and UWERTURA) funded by the NCN;
5. who is not an applicant, principal investigator or fellowship candidate under a proposal that has been submitted or qualified for funding under another NCN call; and
6. whose scientific achievements include at least one paper published or, in the case of research activities in arts, at least one artistic achievement or achievement in the research in art.

Restrictions on submitting proposals are described in detail in Chapter IV of the Terms and regulations of the MINIATURA call for research activities.

Please note that researchers to carry out a research activity in a proposal submitted to the MINIATURA 4 call cannot act as an applicant, principal investigator or fellowship candidate under a proposal that has been submitted or qualified for funding under another NCN. This condition applies until the NCN Director’s decision regarding the proposal considered under the MINIATURA 4 call becomes final.

Proposals may be submitted to the call covering basic research in any of 25 NCN panels comprising three groups: HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences; ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering and NZ – Life Sciences.

Please note that the topic of the proposal must concern a single research activity carried out in one of the following forms: preliminary/pilot studies, library and archive searches, fellowships, research visits, and/ or consultations.

Research activities may be planned for a period of up to 12 months. 

When planning a research activity you must bear in mind that the funding decision will be issued within 4 months of the proposal submission date.

All costs must be justified and consistent with the research activity.

When drawing up the budget, remember that the following are not deemed eligible costs under the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals:

1. provisions for future liabilities, debt interest and other debt servicing expenses, interest and other amounts due on account of late payments, contractual penalties, fines, penalties and expenses to cover the costs of litigation,
2. VAT, if the host institution is entitled to reclaim it,
3. costs of proceedings related to conferment of academic degrees/titles,
4. costs of producing and publishing papers, costs of fees paid for pre-publishing reviews, including cost of open access,
5. costs of leasing, purchase, construction or manufacturing of research equipment, devices and software,,
6. costs of remuneration and scholarships, with the exception of remuneration for collective investigators who are not employees of the host institution for the research activity,
7. purchase costs of IT hardware and office equipment (e.g. computers, licensing costs and software development, printers, scanners, monitors, copiers),
8. costs of organising conferences, workshops, seminars and meetings,
9. costs of travel, accommodation, allowances, if not designated for a person to carry out a research activity and
10. costs of participation in training courses.

Under the MINIATURA 4 call, the costs of remuneration and scholarships, with the exception of remuneration for collective investigators who are not employees of the host institution for the research activity, are not allowed. The costs of travel, accommodation and allowances can only be planned for a person to carry out a research activity.

Detailed information on the budget can be found in the document: Costs in research activities funded by the National Science Centre under the MINIATURA call.

If unjustified budget is planned, a proposal may be rejected.

State aid cannot be applied for under this call for proposals. Detailed information can be found in the State aid section.

1. Proposal are subject to an eligibility check and merit-based evaluation.
2. Eligibility check is carried out by the coordinators.
3. Only proposals approved as eligible by the coordinator can be accepted for merit-based evaluation.   
4. Merit-based evaluation is conducted by members of the expert team. 
5. Proposals undergo a single-stage merit-based evaluation during which individual reviews are drafted independently by three members of the expert team in accordance with the rules for established by the NCN Council for the MINIATURA 4 call.
6. Merit-based evaluation is performed based on the information specified in the proposal.
7. Members of the expert team may reject a proposal as ineligible at the stage of merit-based evaluation.

More information on the proposal evaluation procedure can be found in the Detailed procedure for evaluating proposals for funding of a single research activity under the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals.

Merit-based evaluation of proposals is performed by the expert team. Experts are selected by the NCN Council from among outstanding Polish researchers holding at least a PhD degree.

In the evaluation of proposals, the following criteria are reviewed in particular:

1. whether or not the criterion of basic research has been met,
2. whether or not the requirements of the call announcement have been met,
3. whether or not the cost planned is justified as regards the subject and scope of research activity,
4. evaluation of research activity and
5. evaluation of scientific achievements of a person to carry out a research activity.

Proposals are evaluated pursuant to the Evaluation of proposals under the MINIATURA call for research activities.

The call results will be announced on the NCN’s website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision of the NCN Director within 4 months of the proposal submission date.

Please read the Information for applicants available on the NCN’s website.

Should you have any more queries, please contact us by email: informacja@ncn.gov.pl or by phone: +48 12 341 90 00.

Read our Call Schedule and Schedule of International Programs for 2020 and to follow news on our website: https://www.ncn.gov.pl/

If you plan to submit a proposal under the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals:

1. read all call documents included in the call announcement, in particular:
   
   1. Terms and regulations of the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals,
   2. Proposal form template, 
   3. Costs in research activities funded by the National Science Centre under the MINIATURA call;
2. read the Proposal submission procedure;
3. obtain data from the applicant that is required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal and the research activity;
4. draw up the following documents:

• proposal title related to a selected type of research activity to be carried out;
• brief description of research activity to be carried out;
• justification of the link between research activity to be carried out and research project to be submitted under future NCN calls as well as other national or international calls;
• information on the scientific achievements of the person to carry out research activity containing:
  • their career in research, including research experience gained in Poland and abroad, scholarships and awards granted,
  • publications or artistic achievements: the most important publication in pdf format and justification for choosing it or the most important artistic achievement or achievement in research in art with justification for choosing it,
• expenditures planned to carry out the research activity;
• information on the data management plan concerning data generated or used in the course of the research activity, as required by the proposal;
• information on the ethics aspects, including consents, opinions, permits and/or approvals necessary to carry out a research activity in compliance with generally applicable laws and best practices adopted for a specific academic discipline, as required by the proposal;
• in the case of research activity which includes clinical trials with a medicinal product or a medical device, a detailed justification of the non-commercial nature of the trials;
• in the case of research activities to be carried out in host institutions that do not receive any operating support for research activity, information on research carried out over the last 2 years, together with a list of publications and information on research equipment and other instruments crucial to research; and
• declaration of the applicant, as required by the proposal.

Before the proposal is submitted to the NCN:

1. check if all information in and annexes to the proposal are correct. Verification of the proposal for completeness in the ZSUN/OSF submission system by pressing the Sprawdź kompletność [Check completeness] button does not guarantee that all information has been entered correctly and that the required annexes have been attached;
2. disable editing of the final version of the proposal to NCN;
3. download the final version of the proposal, have it signed by the authorised representative of the institution acting as the applicant and submit the proposal that has been signed to the ZSUN/OSF submission system;
4. submit the proposal form to the National Science Centre via the ZSUN/OSF submission system; and
5. the proposal should be electronically submitted to the National Science Centre via the ZSUN/OSF submission system, using the Wyślij do NCN [Submit to NCN] button.  

Proposals should be electronically submitted to the National Science Centre via the ZSUN/OSF submission system using the Wyślij do NCN [Submit to NCN] button.  

PLEASE NOTE!

Under the MINIATURA 4 call, proposals must only be signed with a qualified electronic signature in the PAdES.

Once the call for proposals has been closed:

1. evaluation of proposals will be carried out;
2. after each stage of evaluation, the funding decision of the NCN Director will be delivered within 4 months of the proposal submission date;
3. if the proposal is qualified for funding, a research activity will start on the date the NCN Director’s decision becomes final.

PLEASE NOTE!

Under the MINIATURA 4 call for proposals, an agreement is not signed. Research activities are funded and carried out pursuant to the General terms of the funding agreement for a single research activity  that must be read and approved by the applicants submitting proposals.

In the event of a breach of the call procedure or other formal infringements, applicants 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 date of effective service of the decision.