2021 Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (HE-MSCA-PF-2021)

[seaspringsun]

Still in Evaluation
Anyone in my situation?
I have asked for an extra stay in the insdustrial sector...I wonder if it was a mistake, as more funding is required. I cannot help thinking about all mistake I might have done...I am very sad as I was hoping to pass at least 70 point (this is my last chance because of the restriction timing after PhD). I was sure I was not getting it but I feel like shit that I did not reach the threshold.

Last year I was also in evaluation, 66 points.

Me too!

Still in evaluation since 1 March

[horizon]

Dig out a post from 2019 (page 63), might be inspiring somehow

This is the most useful thing to understand. Way more important than the famous magic link (in my personal opinion and experience). It also makes the point about possible delays in sending the ESR.
Namely, since there must be 3 evaluators submitting an IER (1) it's not easy to find the required number of experts, (2) some experts may become overloaded because of their broad competences, (3) at some point some expert might withdraw (lack of time, conflict of interest) or might be revoked for an emerging conflict of interest. This to say that the remote evaluation phase (step 1 to produce 3 IERs/proprosal) will take time and it's the phase that causes the major bottleneck.
Once all the IERs are in place, the consensus panel establishes the final scores and from there they rank the proposals from the highest to the lowest score. Meaning that all the proposals are ranked, hence if our proposal is now in 'ranking' mode in the magic link, it means that the evaluation has been completed and the EC is ranking the proposals. The cut-off score for funding depends on the available budget.
Another fundamental point is respecting the template and placing the relevant information exactly where it is expected to be, possibly using bold for specific keywords that are part of the evaluation questionnaire. Remote evaluators are not given much time (in general, less than 1 working day per proposal); and as meticulous as they may be, some information might remain unnoticed or be perceived as unconvincing. The worst case is when information is misplaced. Remote evaluators need to answer specific points in a questionnaire and if the info related to one sub-criterion e.g. of excellence was written in impact, they must evaluate the sub-criterion according to the information at hand.
I hope this helps

I don't think this helps because it is stating the obvious and we all know about how the evaluation is done. The question we are engaging with when thinking about the timing of the ranking is: are phase changes done according to a pattern? Other questions we think about include: Are the scores of successful applicants entered first? What do the time gaps between phase changes (from Submission to Evaluation to Ranking) mean? Because we don't have full access to the information, we are trying to figure out from people's past experiences. The evaluations are done during the first six weeks of the evaluation process and what we are thinking about is what happens during the last week.

Whats sure is that the candidates that get the grant are informed first.

Also, this is an open question. The SEP system starts ranking applicants in the descending order. So, Now hoping that things are run by a software and not humans entering the scores manually (because we are in Europe, we should expect this kind of sophistication), are those ranked first are the same one's that see changes in the status? We are debating and thinking about this aspect.

How the grant should be written.. well.. that is something we had time for 6 months from the time of announcement to the time of submission. What 'Abz' rightly said, the evaluation process has been well known and available for us to know since the beginning. There is no novelty in the information provided.

And if 'anonymous_insider' is saying that the delay is happening due to delays in sending the ESRs, well then its a mismanaged process to keep this option open of late submission which I really think is not happening and also don't think that 'anonymous_insider' meant this.

[alherpo]

Maybe it is too early yet, but have anyone asked the Spanish NCP today about the results?

I sent an e-mail two hours ago, no answer yet

[4degrees]

This is quite important. For the Horizon 2020 programme, there was an NCP Handbook which lists the important points to be addressed under each subheading. I followed that for my first submission and came very close to a SoE.
I could not find something like for the revised format under Horizon Europe.

The template headings also point to specific keywords in the sub-criteria questionnaire. But I think that you may also find the remote evaluator questionnaire online, it should be openly available for a matter of transparency of the evaluation process.
On a side note: the new template killed me... Some sub-headings were taking 4+ lines and you can't get rid of the text in parentheses

I can echo on the last note and I think somewhere in the guidance said the subtitle should remain intact in the submitted proposal…

Oh really? I didn't see that anywhere. Whoops, I deleted the parentheses for 1.2 Soundness of the proposed methodology

[kansal]

Maybe it is too early yet, but have anyone asked the Spanish NCP today about the results?

I sent an e-mail two hours ago, no answer yet

Waiting for your update on this post, thanks !

[anonymous_insider]

This is the most useful thing to understand. Way more important than the famous magic link (in my personal opinion and experience). It also makes the point about possible delays in sending the ESR.
Namely, since there must be 3 evaluators submitting an IER (1) it's not easy to find the required number of experts, (2) some experts may become overloaded because of their broad competences, (3) at some point some expert might withdraw (lack of time, conflict of interest) or might be revoked for an emerging conflict of interest. This to say that the remote evaluation phase (step 1 to produce 3 IERs/proprosal) will take time and it's the phase that causes the major bottleneck.
Once all the IERs are in place, the consensus panel establishes the final scores and from there they rank the proposals from the highest to the lowest score. Meaning that all the proposals are ranked, hence if our proposal is now in 'ranking' mode in the magic link, it means that the evaluation has been completed and the EC is ranking the proposals. The cut-off score for funding depends on the available budget.
Another fundamental point is respecting the template and placing the relevant information exactly where it is expected to be, possibly using bold for specific keywords that are part of the evaluation questionnaire. Remote evaluators are not given much time (in general, less than 1 working day per proposal); and as meticulous as they may be, some information might remain unnoticed or be perceived as unconvincing. The worst case is when information is misplaced. Remote evaluators need to answer specific points in a questionnaire and if the info related to one sub-criterion e.g. of excellence was written in impact, they must evaluate the sub-criterion according to the information at hand.
I hope this helps

I don't think this helps because it is stating the obvious and we all know about how the evaluation is done. The question we are engaging with when thinking about the timing of the ranking is: are phase changes done according to a pattern? Other questions we think about include: Are the scores of successful applicants entered first? What do the time gaps between phase changes (from Submission to Evaluation to Ranking) mean? Because we don't have full access to the information, we are trying to figure out from people's past experiences. The evaluations are done during the first six weeks of the evaluation process and what we are thinking about is what happens during the last week.

Whats sure is that the candidates that get the grant are informed first.

Also, this is an open question. The SEP system starts ranking applicants in the descending order. So, Now hoping that things are run by a software and not humans entering the scores manually (because we are in Europe, we should expect this kind of sophistication), are those ranked first are the same one's that see changes in the status? We are debating and thinking about this aspect.

How the grant should be written.. well.. that is something we had time for 6 months from the time of announcement to the time of submission. What 'Abz' rightly said, the evaluation process has been well known and available for us to know since the beginning. There is no novelty in the information provided.

And if 'anonymous_insider' is saying that the delay is happening due to delays in sending the ESRs, well then its a mismanaged process to keep this option open of late submission which I really think is not happening and also don't think that 'anonymous_insider' meant this.

You're making several important points.
First, sorry if my msg was off-topic, but not everyone is accustomed with the valuation process and with the correct use of the template (again, personal experience, and also experience of my institutional projects office reading thousands of proposals... they are all over the places). But I digress, sorry...
Not sure if you are absolutely certain 100% that awarded fellows are notified first. I've always had the feeling that the EC actually first gets rid of notifications to failed applicants.
Regarding the possible delays, I think we should consider two aspects: (1) we have been spoiled by the EC to receive the ESR even 1 month before the expected date; (2) delays in the evaluation process are not due to mismanagement of the evaluation procedure by the EC: the EC doesn't have much power over remote evaluators who submit their IERs past the due deadline. Then, putting all the experts together for the consensus panel meeting is not easy. Which is why I was referring to the evaluation process and its bottlenecks. So, all in all, I didn't mean to provide obvious information, but just reasoning together about all the evaluation steps.
In any case the EC is still on time, it's just that we are super anxious to know the results (see point 1 above) And I'm not even a prospective fellow, I am just the prospective supervisor, yet, I'm super anxious to know

[UKR]

Just the new decision of EC that the Russian Candidates will not get funding.

[plasmonics]

Just the new decision of EC that the Russian Candidates will not get funding.

where is the news source? if that was true, it must be a ridiculous decision i ever heard. Science should not be involved into the politics. FYI: im not Russian.

[Fuglen_49]

EU stopped funding all scientific russian projects so that might not be surprising (as sad as it is... )

[UKR]

I hope it was political issue but this is a crime in the name of the politics. Thousands of people in Ukraine are killed in a week. In response of the innocent people EU took action.

Just the new decision of EC that the Russian Candidates will not get funding.

where is the news source? if that was true, it must be a ridiculous decision i ever heard. Science should not be involved into the politics. FYI: im not Russian.