NWO Open Competition

About the NWO Open Competition

NWO Open Competition is the Dutch Research Council's curiosity-driven funding line: proposals are judged on scientific quality alone, with no predetermined research theme. It is not one scheme but a family split across NWO's domains, and the sub-schemes differ enough to be separate competitions sharing a name. Domain Science (ENW) covers earth sciences, astronomy, chemistry, computer science, life sciences, physics and mathematics, and runs three instruments. ENW-XS funds innovative, high-risk work up to EUR 50,000 for at most 12 months, and is assessed by distributed peer review: the applicants are also the evaluators, proposals are anonymised, and an assessor who misses the reporting deadline has their own proposal withdrawn. ENW-M funds individual or paired projects, EUR 400,000 for a single main applicant (M-1) up to EUR 800,000 for a main applicant plus one co-applicant (M-2), with variants for investment budget (M-1X) and international Weave collaboration. It is a continuous call processed in packages that closes when the proposal cap is reached rather than on a fixed date; external referees report, the applicant writes a rebuttal, and there is no interview. ENW-XL funds consortia from EUR 1,000,000 to EUR 3,000,000 over at most six years, in two stages, with referees, a rebuttal and an interview. Social Sciences and Humanities runs its own Open Competition with XS, M and L variants, consolidating from 2027 into Explore and Expand. Medical and health research goes through ZonMw rather than ENW, at up to EUR 800,000 over four to five years, or EUR 1,050,000 with the optional investment module. What sets the family apart is the absence of thematic steering, assessment under DORA principles, anonymised review in XS, and NWO's stated policy of steering toward award rates in the order of 25 percent to manage applicant workload.

Who is eligible?

• •ENW-M: full, associate and assistant professors or comparable, holding a tenured position or a tenure track agreement at a Dutch institution
• •ENW-XS: professors and PhD holders with a salaried position covering the application process and the research. Postdocs are explicitly welcomed
• •ENW-XL: at least two applicants from different research organisations, and each researcher may appear in only one XL proposal per round
• •ENW-M submissions are limited to once every twelve months. Holders of an ongoing NWO grant must wait until two years before its planned end date
• •SSH-XS: PhD obtained at least five years before submission, single applicant only, maximum one application per calendar year across NWO and ZonMw Open Competition
• •ENW-XS proposals must be anonymised, carrying no applicant or research-group names
• •ZonMw: a full proposal is possible only after a positive decision on a pre-proposal in the same round

How to apply

1. Pick the right domain and instrument

   ENW, SSH or ZonMw, then XS, M or XL. The eligibility rules, budget ceilings and assessment procedures differ substantially between them, and a wrong-domain proposal can be ruled inadmissible before review.

2. Submit through ISAAC before the deadline

   NWO advises starting submission at least one day before the deadline. Late applications are not taken into consideration, and formal conditions such as English language, anonymisation and compulsory annexes are checked first.

3. Pre-proposal stage (ENW-XL only)

   The cluster assessment committee scores and ranks pre-proposals on scientific quality and consortium quality, weighted equally, and decides which consortia are invited to submit a full proposal.

4. External referee review

   Independent experts report on the full proposal. In ENW-XS this step is replaced by distributed peer review, where other applicants in your cluster assess your anonymised proposal.

5. Write the rebuttal within ten working days

   You receive the anonymised referee reports and respond in writing. The committee explicitly debates whether the rebuttal answers the critical comments, so this is a scored opportunity rather than a formality.

6. Interview and final ranking (ENW-XL)

   A delegation of up to three consortium members is interviewed, where the committee may raise questions not present in the referee reports. The committee then ranks proposals and the NWO board decides.

What sets winning proposals apart

• ✓Write ENW-XS for non-specialists in your cluster. The call warns that assessors may award a lower ranking to any proposal written in a way that is not accessible to those in other disciplines, and your reviewers are fellow applicants from across seven Science disciplines.
• ✓Treat consortium quality as half the ENW-XL pre-proposal score. It carries 50% at pre-proposal and 40% at full proposal, equal to or close to scientific quality, so a strong idea with a weakly justified consortium does not clear the bar.
• ✓Justify the consortium against the ENW-M counterfactual. ENW-XL is for consortia whose combination creates added value compared to separate smaller projects, so state explicitly why this cannot be three ENW-M grants.
• ✓Use the rebuttal properly. The committee debates whether your written rebuttal constitutes a well-formulated response to the critical comments, and referee criticism is not accepted without question, so a precise reply can move the outcome.
• ✓Start submitting at least a day early. NWO says so in the call text, and a technical failure at the ISAAC deadline is not grounds for an exception.

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