DAINA 3

Proposals for NCN funding of the Polish part of the research project under DAINA 3 may be submitted by entities specified in Article 27 (1) (1) – (2), (1) (4) – (5) and (1) (7) – (8) of the Act on the National Science Centre for which project funding does not constitute state aid, i.e.:

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, 1383, as amended);
5. international research institutes established pursuant to other acts and acting in the Republic of Poland;
   • 5(a) Łukasiewicz Centre operating pursuant to the Act on the Łukasiewicz Research Network of 21 February 2019 (Journal of Laws of 2020, item 2098);
   • 5(b) institutes operating within the Łukasiewicz Research Network;
6. Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences;
7. other entities involved in research independently on a continuous basis;
8. 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);
9. 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);
10. scientific libraries;
11. legal entities with registered office in Poland;
    • 11(a) President of the Central Office of Measures; and
12. natural persons.

The principal investigator in the Polish research team must be at least a PhD holder when submitting a proposal. The PI will manage the work of the Polish research team. The PI’s scientific achievements must include at least one paper published or accepted for publication. For research in art, the PI must have at least one paper published or accepted for publication or at least one artistic achievement or achievement in research in art. Scientific achievements must be presented for the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year (starting with 2013).

Please note: This period can be extended by long-term (in excess of 90 days) documented sick leaves or physiotherapy leaves granted on account of being unfit to work. In addition, this period may be extended by the number of months of a childcare leave granted pursuant to the Labour Code and in the case of women, by 18 months for every child born or adopted child, whichever manner of accounting for career breaks is preferable.

Please note: As of this call edition, a narrative CV is available. We recommend using the annexed (optional) template of the principal investigator’s academic and research track record.

Please note: The principal investigator must reside in Poland for at least 50% of the project duration period. This period includes business trips necessary for the project, in particular involving fieldwork, participation in conferences and/or library and archive research.

Please note: The principal investigator must be a person employed by the host institution for the Polish part of the research project under an employment contract at least on a half-time basis for the entire project duration period.

Pursuant to Resolution No 114/2023 of the Council of the National Science Centre of 7 December 2023 laying down the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams, funded by the NCN under the DAINA 3 call for Polish and Lithuanian research projects:

1. a person named as the principal investigator in a proposal submitted to DAINA 3 must not be a person who represents the host institution for the project;
2. in a call edition, i.e. in calls for proposals closed on the same day (in this edition: DAINA 3 and SONATINA 8), one can be named as the principal investigator in one proposal only;
3. a person named as the principal investigator in a proposal must not be a person who, on the proposal submission date:
   • manages three or more research projects funded under NCN calls (research project management applies to the period from the date of signing the funding agreement for a project funded under an NCN call until the day of submitting the final report on the completion of the research project);
   • manages two research projects funded under NCN calls and is named as the principal investigator in another proposal pending evaluation or recommended for funding;
   • manages a research project funded under NCN calls and is named as the principal investigator in two other proposals pending evaluation or recommended for funding;
   • is named as the principal investigator in three other proposals under evaluation or recommended for funding under NCN calls;
4. a person intended to carry out a research activity in a proposal a MINIATURA call and for which the funding decision has not become final, must not be named as the principal investigator in a proposal submitted to DAINA 3.

Please note: If the same person is named as the principal investigator in more than one proposal submitted to a call edition, the proposal submitted to the OSF submission system at an earlier date will be accepted.

Please note: The restrictions referred to above do not include projects funded under or proposals submitted to PRELUDIUM BIS and DIOSCURI.

The total number of NCN projects managed by a researcher and proposals submitted to the NCN pending evaluation or recommended for funding in which that researcher is named as the principal investigator, must not be more than two, or three if the researcher manages at least one project funded under an international NCN call or has submitted at least one proposal to an international NCN call.

The table below illustrates the eligible funding requests.

Explanation:

¹ Project management applies to the period from the date of signing the funding agreement under NCN calls until the date of submitting the final report on the project performance.

² The limit applies to proposals pending evaluation or recommended for funding.

³ Research projects or proposals under NCN calls: OPUS, PRELUDIUM, SONATINA, SONATA, SONATA BIS, MAESTRO and research projects under HARMONIA and SYMFONIA.

⁴ The calls launched by the NCN in collaboration with foreign research-funding agencies include:

• calls launched under EU-funded programmes – ERA-Net and European Partnerships (UNISONO, POLONEZ, POLONEZ BIS);
• non-EU-funded calls launched by the networks of research-funding institutions, including within the framework of LAP cooperation (OPUS LAP/ WEAVE, WEAVE UNISONO, IMPRESS-U);
• bilateral calls of the NCN and foreign partner institutions (GRIEG, POLS, IDEALAB, BEETHOVEN, BEETHOVEN CLASSIC, BEETHOVEN LIFE, CEUS, MOZART, ALPHORN, DAINA, SHENG).

Please note: Proposals covering overlapping research tasks must not be submitted to the same call edition.

Please note: Proposals covering research tasks overlapping tasks specified in another proposal submitted earlier to an NCN call or with respect to which an appeal has been initiated, can only be submitted after the funding decision has become final.

Proposals covering basic research may be submitted to the call in any of 26 NCN panels within three areas:

• HS – Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences;
• ST – Physical Sciences and Engineering; and
• NZ – Life Sciences.

Please note: Under DAINA 3, proposals are reviewed within inter-panel teams (HS, ST, NZ). The principal investigator selects the panel. The panel cannot be changed once the proposal has been submitted. A proposal may be rejected if an incorrect panel is selected.

Under DAINA 3, research projects may be planned for a period of 36 months.

The terms of the call do not specify the minimum or maximum number of the research team members. However, the rationale of involvement of co-investigators in the project shall be evaluated by the Expert Team. The project must include the description of competencies and tasks to be performed by individual members of the research team.

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

Please note: Under DAINA 3, senior researchers must not be involved in research projects.

A post-doc type post is a full-time post, scheduled by the project’s principal investigator for a person who has been conferred a PhD degree within 7 years before employment in the project (which period can be extended pursuant to the types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under DAINA 3).

Please note: A post-doc must have been conferred a PhD degree by another institution than the one planned to employ 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. A prospective post-doc must be selected in an open call.

Please note: PhD students collecting NCN scholarships must be selected in an open call.

To find out more on the budget for salaries and scholarships, please read the types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under DAINA 3.

The budget is an important aspect of the proposal subject to an evaluation.

The budget must be well justified as regards the subject and scope of the research, based on realistic calculations and must itemise expenses covered from the NCN resources (the so-called eligible costs) in individual years of the project’s implementation.

Please note: If unreasonable costs (the so-called non-eligible costs) are planned, the proposal may, according to the competent agency’s rules, be rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria. In the case of eligible costs, justifications of the forecasted expenditures and their costs are evaluated by the Expert Teams. If any errors in this respect are found, the proposal may be rejected during the merit-based evaluation.

Please note: The Polish project budget is completed in the OSF submission system pursuant to the proposal form template. The Lithuanian project budget is annexed to the proposal in the form of a budget table. The costs planned by the Lithuanian research team must comply with the RCL’s rules.

The minimum funding of the Polish part of the project for the entire project duration period is not pre-determined. The maximum funding is PLN 1,000,000 provided that the costs are realistic in terms of the subject and scope of the research.

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

Direct costs include:

1. remuneration, including:
   • full-time remuneration for the principal investigator and post-doc;
   • additional remuneration for research team members;
   • salaries and scholarships for students and PhD students;
2. purchase or manufacturing of research equipment, devices and software;
3. other direct costs, including:
   • purchase of material and small equipment;
   • outsourced services;
   • business trips, visits and consultations;
   • compensation for collective investigators and
   • other costs crucial to the project according to the types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under DAINA 3.

Please note: The proposal in the OSF submission system must include the project costs expressed in PLN and EUR, rounded down to full integers, according to the following exchange rate: EUR 1 = PLN 4.3334.

Please note: The costs of consultations and visits of the Lithuanian partners who receive parallel funding from the RCL in the project are non-eligible.

Please note: 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) resulting from research projects may only be incurred following a positive review by the NCN.

Indirect costs include:

• 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;
• 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.

Please note: The costs of open access to publications subject to NCN’s Open Access Policy must not be incurred as direct costs.

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. The expenditure incurred from that amount must be eligible according to the said regulation.

You will find out more on the costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under DAINA 3 here.

State aid cannot be applied for under DAINA 3.

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) oand 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.

   Please note: 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.

Please note: The following information must be provided in English.

Information required in the proposal:

1. details of the principal investigators (PI of the Polish research team and PI of the Lithuanian research team), including:
   • information on their academic and research career and research experience as well as 1-10 publications; for research in art, 1-10 most important papers published or artistic achievements and achievements in research in art;
   • information on research project management or other research funding under NCN calls or other national or international calls;

   in the proposal submission year or over the period of 10 years prior to the proposal submission year (including applicable breaks);

2. key information on the proposal and host institutions for the project (for Polish host institutions also in Polish);
3. work plan presenting research tasks planned for both (Polish and Lithuanian) research teams (for Polish research teams also in Polish);
4. information on the co-investigators’ work in the project;
5. summary of the project;
6. abstract for the general public (also in Polish);
7. short project description with bibliography (no more than 5 pages, A4. Please note: Project literature does not count towards the page limit.);
8. full project description with bibliography (no more than 15 pages, A4. Please note: Project literature does not count towards the page limit.);
9. information on research projects carried out in international cooperation and benefits of such cooperation (required only if projects are carried out with the use of large international research equipment by the Polish or Lithuanian research teams or projects are carried out in collaboration with foreign partners);
10. information on ethics issues in research;
11. information on the data management plan concerning data generated or used in the course of a research project, as required by the proposal; and
12. project budget drafted pursuant to the regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams, funded by the NCN under DAINA 3.

Proposals are subject to an eligibility check followed by a merit based-evaluation.

Eligibility check

An eligibility check of proposals is performed by the NCN and RCL acting independently, according to their respective terms. NCN’s eligibility check of proposals is carried out by the Coordinators.

Only complete proposals that comply with all terms of the call can undergo a merit-based evaluation, following a positive eligibility check by both the NCN and the RCL.

Please note: A proposal may also be rejected on the grounds that it does not meet the eligibility criteria during the merit-based evaluation.

Merit-based evaluation

A merit-based evaluation of funding proposals is carried out by the Expert Teams whose members are recommended by the NCN and the RCL and external reviewers who are not Expert Teams members.

A merit-based evaluation of proposals submitted to DAINA 3 is performed in two stages:

Stage I: Evaluation by an Expert Team appointed by the NCN, based on information in and annexes to the proposal, except for the full project description. Individual reviews are drafted by two members of the Expert Team acting independently. In the case of proposals which are assigned an auxiliary NCN Review Panel specifying disciplines covered by NCN review panels other than the one to which the proposal was submitted, the Chair of the Expert Team may decide to seek another review from a member of another Expert Team (the so-called interdisciplinary proposals).

Then, based on the discussions, a list of proposals recommended for stage II of evaluation is compiled by the Expert Team at the first meeting.

Stage II: Proposals are submitted to at least two external reviewers who draft their individual reviews based on information in and annexes to the proposal, except for the short project description. Then, based on the individual reviews of the external reviewers and discussions at the second meeting, a ranking list of proposals recommended for funding is compiled by the Expert Team.

To find out more on NCN’s proposal evaluation procedure, please read the proposal evaluation procedure for the Expert Team under DAINA 3.

The evaluation of proposals submitted to DAINA 3 focus on:

1. compliance with the basic research criteria, set forth in Article 2 (1) of the Act on the National Science Centre;
2. quality and innovative nature of the research or tasks to be performed;
3. impact of the research project on the advancement of the scientific discipline;
4. assessment of the feasibility of the research;
5. balanced and complementary contribution of all research teams applying for funding of a research project within the framework of collaboration;
6. scientific achievements of the principal investigators, including publications in renowned academic press/journals;
7. assessment of the results of other research projects conducted by the principal investigator of the Polish part of the project previously funded by the NCN or from other sources and assessment of the results of other research projects by the principal investigators;
8. relevance of the costs with regards to the subject and scope of the research and
9. preparation of the proposal and compliance with other requirements set forth in the call.

Proposals are evaluated pursuant to the proposal evaluation criteria applicable to DAINA 3.

Please note: Proposals with a zero score or “no” decision agreed by the Expert Team in any reviewed criterion (except for the data management and ethics issues) cannot be recommended for funding.

A merit-based evaluation is performed by the Expert Team based on the terms of the call and evaluation criteria applicable to DAINA 3.

Experts are selected by the NCN Council from among outstanding Polish and foreign researchers who are at least PhD holders. Expert teams are established for each call edition. The composition of the Expert Team is subject to the number and subjects of proposals submitted to each panel. Under DAINA 3, proposals are evaluated by inter-panel teams (HS, ST, NZ).

The call results will be made available on the NCN website and communicated to the applicants by way of a decision of the NCN Director by the end of November 2024.

Should you have more questions or queries, please contact us.

Polish Partner (NCN):

Coordinators:

• Coordinator for Life Sciences: Jadwiga Spyrka, PhD
• Coordinator for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: Oskar Wolski, PhD
• Coordinator for Physical Sciences and Engineering: Anna Koteja, PhD

General Affairs:

Magdalena Nowak, PhD

Lithuanian Partner (LMT)

Asta Aleksandravičienė

If you are intending to submit a proposal to DAINA 3:

1. read all call documents included in the call text, in particular:
   • Resolution laying down the terms of and regulations on awarding funding for research tasks carried out by the Polish research teams, funded by the NCN under the DAINA 3 call for Polish and Lithuanian research projects;
   • Types of costs in research projects funded by the National Science Centre under DAINA 3;
   • Proposal form template where you can find out about information and annexes needed to complete the electronic proposal form in the OSF submission system;
   • find out about the proposal submission procedure;
2. obtain data from the host institution for the project required to complete the proposal and find out about the internal procedures that may affect the proposal and project performance (cost planned in the project, procedure for acquiring signature(s) of authorised representative(s) of the institution to confirm submission of the proposal);
3. if a group of Polish entities applies, draft a research project cooperation agreement (template available in Polish);
4. letters of acceptance from publishers confirming that the paper has been accepted for publication (when the scientific achievements section includes papers accepted for publication but not published yet);
5. make sure that the Lithuanian partner is on the list of Lithuanian institutions entered in the Register of Education and Research Institutions eligible for the call, and the Lithuanian principal investigator is a PhD holder. The list is available here under “Registers” in the “Education providers” category.

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 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. check if all tabs have been completed in the correct language according to the proposal form template;
3. disable editing of the final version of the proposal to the NCN;
4. download the confirmation of proposal submission to be signed by the principal investigator and authorised representative(s) of the entity; and
5. upload the signed confirmation of proposal submission.

When the proposal is completed and all required annexes are 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 proposal has been submitted to the OSF submission system, the Polish principal investigator may generate a PDF version of the complete proposal.

Upon the end of the call for proposals:

1. evaluation of proposals will be carried out;
2. after each stage of evaluation, the funding decision of the NCN Director will be communicated,
3. if the proposal qualifies for funding, a funding agreement will be entered into; and
4. the project will be carried out pursuant to the funding agreement and regulations on the implementation of research projects, fellowships and scholarships.

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.