The Budapest Neutron Centre runs a regular open-access national and international user programme that involves 16 neutron instruments and a few related service laboratories. You can apply for beamtime at BNC on the listed user-programme instruments. These Science Proposal calls are announced on the BNC website and via mailing lists. To apply for beamtime on an instrument one has to submit a research proposal electronically by filling in the off-line proposal form and emailing it to the BNC User Office. Science proposals submitted before typically mid-April and mid-October, the two-yearly proposal submission deadlines (deadlines announced in due time), will be refereed by the international User Selection Panel in due course and if accepted, the panel recommends allocation of beam time for the experiment. User Office negotiates the dates for the experiment with the principal investigator (PI). All BNC proposals remain valid until their regular expiration date of one year. Expired proposals may be resubmitted and will be refereed again. 

In between the regular proposal deadlines, submission of urgent beamtime proposals is also possible in exceptionally important cases. In this latter case, upon submitting the filled-in regular proposal form at any time, you should indicate your request for urgent handling of your proposal in your cover letter. The evaluation and beam time assignment of urgent proposals should be approved by the director of BNC. 

The majority of the beamtime on BNC instruments is used for general science proposals. However. BNC also participates is various -- thematic -- international programs, in which part of the beamtime on a selection of instruments may be applied for. The deadlines for those proposals -- aimed at different user groups -- are called at different times of the year. The evaluation procedure and the referee committees may also vary from project to project. Please check all project proposals and application deadlines here. If in doubt please contact the BNC User Office.

As a rule, the beam time is provided by BNC free of charge, if certain conditions are fulfilled, as described in the Terms of Reference. (The Terms of Reference do not apply for paid proprietary research, the terms of which please consult the User Office.) Experimental reports related to science proposals are due within three months succeeding any experiment at BNC. Please use the BNC-experimental report form and email your report to the BNC User Office. The experimental reports will be treated as confidential by the BNC Management, but they will be made available for the User Selection Panel for evaluation of your future proposals and the general trends of research fields. 

Should you have any technical questions about a BNC instrument or inquiries about the feasibility of your planned experiment, please contact the beamline responsible for the respective instrument. Concerning administrative issues, please contact the User Office. 

Yearly regular deadlines of submission beam time proposals are as follows:

              for reactor cycles in the following September through January is 15 April,
              for reactor cycles in the following February through June is      15 October.

Special rules for a proposal period may apply.

The actual call for BNC science proposals can be found here.