The main statements of the new Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) research and development (R&D) project ‘‘Investigations on the Physics of Multicharged Ion Sources for JINR and CERN Hadron Accelerators’’ are presented in this report. The project will be performed with the purpose of improving the source efficiency for the JINR and CERN accelerator complexes. The project will include the theoretical and experimental investigations as well as x‐ray spectroscopy of highly charged ion plasma in the sources. ©1996 American Institute of Physics.