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Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:37 pm
by p3dr0
CountZ wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 2:49 pm
Thanks for this!

We were considering the article on the lottery system. I still have to read it. My opinion (without having read the article yet) is that such a system would fail to differentiate between very good proposals (that should get funded) and good proposals (that shouldn't be funded given limited resources).
p3dr0 wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 12:56 pm
Still, if you want to discuss this "unfairness", is the number of evaluation reviews asked per year available? This could be a good indicator.
What do you mean by the number of evaluation reviews per year?
You're welcome!

For the lottery system, at some point mark differences start to be subjective: is a proposal ranked 95.6 really much better than a proposal ranked 95.3? Instead, we can first identify all very good proposals (say, above 90) and then draw randomly from this pool of proposals. One just has to reach some level of "excellence" (I hate this word) to access the lottery, but then s/he could apply every year with her/his very good proposal until s/he get funded, without spending too much time writing/editing the damn thing again and again. In the current system, one can spend as much time running behind funding than doing actual research.

For the evaluation review, sorry, it was a bit cryptic, but as answered above, these are asked by the applicant when s/he feels the review was unfair. I might assume the number of evaluation reviews per call could be a good indicator of the perceived fairness of the evaluation, say if there are a lot of such evaluation reviews for every call this could indicate a problem. I am not sure the EC publishes stats on these, though.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 4:46 pm
by hopefulacademic
We have to take into account the differences in evaluation by different reviewers from different countries. I remember from my time studying in Belgium that grading was much more negativist: deducting points, rather than looking for the positives. People who came from abroad were surprised that even with a near perfect task done, they still got less-than-perfect scores. This probably has happened here as well but as long as you work with humans, this is possible. This is not a call for algorithmic evaluation though, as that would really allow for gaming the system.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:51 pm
by Simbi
I am a clear example of the randomness/weakness of the system. I first submitted last year and I got 91, this year I went down to 76...same identical proposal. I am literally speachless.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:52 pm
by CountZ
Wow what a huge jump!
Did you address the weaknesses identified in the proposal that scored 91?
Was it marked as a resubmission?
.
Simbi wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:51 pm
I am a clear example of the randomness/weakness of the system. I first submitted last year and I got 91, this year I went down to 76...same identical proposal. I am literally speachless.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:54 pm
by Simbi
Yes and yes. I have carefully addressed the weakness.
CountZ wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:52 pm
Simbi wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 6:51 pm
I am a clear example of the randomness/weakness of the system. I first submitted last year and I got 91, this year I went down to 76...same identical proposal. I am literally speachless.
Wow what a huge jump!
Did you address the weaknesses identified in the proposal that scored 91?
Was it marked as a resubmission?

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:51 pm
by CAR-2018
CountZ wrote:
Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:17 am
btw these people have been added to the group
Geezer_MSCA
Thana2019
CAR-2018
Sorry, what's the link to the group? Thanks.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 9:52 pm
by Bren
Kitten?

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Wed Feb 13, 2019 11:20 pm
by Katibon
Hello, I'm also an example of that all this thing is a pure lottery. This year was my third submission.
The first time I've got a quite high score (89,4), really good comments and was very enthusiastic and optimistic about my second submission. Of course, then in 2017 I resubmitted a clearly improved version of the project, with all weaknesses being addressed... And I've got a very low score (78 or 79, I don't remember now), with a completely different kind of comments.
After addressing all the comments from the previous two intents, this year I've got only 83,6. That is, while my project has improved a lot, the score is still very low... My final conclusion is that MC is a lottery.
I'd like to add my firm to the article you're preparing. Please, let me know how I can help.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 12:12 am
by Dort
I understand (though not completely agree) with most of the comments made on my project... But I have to say that it is simply an absurd having to add a single word on gender if it is just not relevant to the project (as was my case). Losing points for not wasting time on somethint irrelevant (for the project) is just fucking ridiculous.

"The proposal lacks clear specifications of how gender aspects would be addressed analytically or conceptually."

Well, because gender aspects will NOT be addressed!

"- The proposal does not clearly identify internet studies as an appropriate area for the researcher to gain new knowledge during the fellowship."

Internet studies is exactly my main area of study, all my research (previous and future) relates to internet, do I really need to say that I'll gain knowledge on it during the fellowship?

Also it really seems reviewers don't pay attention to what you write. I proposed a field trip on my project, but mentioned that one of my WP's was focused exaclty in prospecting possible targets for interviews (in a series of countries) In other words, one WP was solely to find who to interview but the reviewer complained that I failed to provide enough data on to who I'm going ot interview during the fild trip! Also that it wasn't clear the allocation of time for each country. I'm studying diaspora, so I allocate more or less time based on the size and relevance of the studied diaspora in each country. Ok, I failed to disclose it, but because that seems absurdly obvious, specially when I say that part of the job was to look for interviewees.

Re: 2018 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2018)

Posted: Thu Feb 14, 2019 6:14 am
by Turpentine
Just a quick post to tell you that I've opened a new thread "MSCA-IF awardees in 2019 and academics networking" to keep this beautiful gathering of gentle people going on! :roll: