Starting from January 1, 2025, the revised Regulations of the National Natural Science Foundation of China will officially come into effect. This is the first revision in 17 years since the implementation of the Regulation on April 1, 2007. What are the changes in the newly revised regulations and what impact will they have on China's scientific research work? The reporter interviewed experts in the relevant field. Where does the money come from? After this revision, Article 4 of the Regulations stipulates that the sources of natural science funds are mainly from central budget appropriations, encouraging local governments, enterprises, and other organizations to invest funds in a joint funding model, and encouraging social forces to donate. The National Natural Science Foundation of China began exploring the joint funding model in the mid-1990s and has now formed a mature joint funding model Hu Ming, a professor at the School of Law of South China University of Technology, said that the revision of the Regulation, which includes it, can fully mobilize the enthusiasm of all sectors of society to participate in and invest in basic research, better play the platform oriented role of the National Natural Science Foundation, build the joint fund into an important platform to promote the transformation of basic research results, promote the application of excellent results, promote the integration of scientific research and industry development, the deep integration of innovation chain and industry chain, and promote the benefit of scientific fund funded achievements to society. Professor Zhang Qiang from the Department of Earth System Science at Tsinghua University said, "Social forces can support basic research through the National Natural Science Foundation of China. With the professional and credible evaluation mechanism of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, they can help select the best and most promising projects, attract donations from social forces, increase funding efforts, alleviate the current problem of low funding rates, and achieve a win-win situation." According to reporters, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has established a relatively mature joint fund management model, attracting 11 industry departments, 32 local governments, and 19 enterprises to invest in the joint fund. The total scale of the joint fund has exceeded 30 billion yuan; In addition, actively exploring the establishment of an effective mechanism for social donations, we will receive a social donation of 100 million yuan for the first time in 2024. How should money be spent? The Regulation emphasizes the support of scientific funds for talent cultivation and team building, and specifies in Article 8 the establishment of special funds to support young talents. Zhang Qiang said, "Young scientific and technological talents are the main force of China's scientific and technological innovation and development. At present, the National Natural Science Foundation of China has established a relatively complete youth talent funding system consisting of youth funds, excellent youth, and outstanding youth projects. In the past two years, special pilot work has been carried out for undergraduate and doctoral students. This revision of the Regulations clarifies that the fund should establish a special fund for cultivating young scientific and technological talents. While clarifying past successful practices in the form of regulations, it also demonstrates to young scholars the unwavering determination of the National Natural Science Foundation of China to support outstanding young talents. We have reason to expect that in the future, the National Natural Science Foundation of China will further increase its funding for young scientific and technological talents, and comprehensively promote the development of educational and technological talents." To encourage original basic research, the Regulations Article 17 specifies that fund management institutions may formulate specialized application and evaluation regulations for major originality, interdisciplinary innovation, and other projects. Lv Wei, a researcher of the Development Research Center of the State Council and a former member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, said, "This revision has given a green light to exploring the selection mechanism for non consensus original innovation projects. In future practice, we can explore various forms, such as establishing a screening mechanism for 'non consensus projects' recommended by experts in their real names, providing scientists with greater autonomy in choosing research directions and technical routes, and gradually promoting and cultivating original scientific research by means of phased evaluation and rolling support." What should money do? Articles 9, 10, 38 and other provisions of the Regulation involve relying units, mainly including relaxing the scope of registration for relying units, strengthening the management responsibilities of relying units, and increasing the punishment for violations by relying units. Yang Lingchun, Deputy Minister of the Department of Scientific Research at Peking University, said, "This means that the supporting unit will play a more important role in the fund management process. As a supporting unit, fund management not only undertakes the responsibility of the scientific research management department, but also needs to further coordinate the cooperation of various management departments on campus, continuously improve the management system of scientific research projects, and promote the standardization, process oriented, and refined management of natural science fund work." Hu Ming believes that the revision of the "Regulations" implements the requirements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on the "streamlining administration, delegating powers, and improving services" reform in the scientific research field. The strengthening of the responsibilities of the supporting units in the Regulations can improve the quality and efficiency of scientific fund management. The Regulation has made a series of new provisions to strengthen the construction of scientific research integrity and technological ethics, including the addition of a scientific research integrity commitment system (Articles 12 and 21), the addition of a joint punishment mechanism (Articles 13, 18, and 35), the strengthening of the handling of violations, and the addition of new types of violations (Chapter 6). Yang Lingchun believes that these measures aim to enhance the sense of responsibility of researchers, supporting units, and evaluation experts, and create a fair, just, and upright research atmosphere. Lv Wei stated that the regulations not only strengthen the principle and methods of recusal for evaluation experts, but also stipulate that fund management institutions should regularly evaluate the performance of evaluation experts in fulfilling their evaluation responsibilities, and should refer to the opinions of applicants when evaluating. Based on the evaluation results, establish a reputation file for the reviewing experts. This approach is conducive to strengthening the responsibility of evaluation experts and selecting fair, objective, and responsible review experts. (New Society)