2019 Marie Curie Individual Fellowship (H2020-MSCA-IF-2019)

[SimpaLif]

I'm quite sure that the majority opinion here (that number of publications is not important, at least not officially) is absolutely and completely wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to call that a very silly point of view to have in academia.

In the guide for writing, it was clearly stated that your publication record is important. And you must highlight it. Especially to indicate that you are capable of carrying out the project if it gets accepted. What matters is for your field and for your level of expertise, is your publication record sufficient. Another important point is to judge your expertise in the area you want to carry out research in. The only way to showing this is your publication record in the area. Heck, the explicitly tell you to highlight the journals you published in and the conferences you presented in.

Several sources have compiled common positive and negative review points for proposals. And the publication and conference record was an important point in all of them (both positive and negative).

However, you can't compare the publication record of one person in Mathematics immediately after their PhD, and someone else in Biology 5 years after their PhD, and then make a conclusion on that. Both the field and the experience levels are very important.


And a quick search in the reviewers guide also says the exact same thing:

Don't penalize proposals if you think that the researchers' amount of publications is too low; however, you can penalize proposals if you think that the amount of publications is too low given his/her level of experience, and this may affect his/her professional development as an independent/mature researcher during the fellowship.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/fi ... uators.pdf (This is the 2018 version)

I think that they should consider all (proposal + achievements of the candidate). What about country of origin? What if I am coming from a poor country and have some remarkable results? It is not same as if I am coming from country where I had all conditions to do research and made only one paper.

[Kenniz]

I'm quite sure that the majority opinion here (that number of publications is not important, at least not officially) is absolutely and completely wrong. In fact, I would go so far as to call that a very silly point of view to have in academia.

In the guide for writing, it was clearly stated that your publication record is important. And you must highlight it. Especially to indicate that you are capable of carrying out the project if it gets accepted. What matters is for your field and for your level of expertise, is your publication record sufficient. Another important point is to judge your expertise in the area you want to carry out research in. The only way to showing this is your publication record in the area. Heck, the explicitly tell you to highlight the journals you published in and the conferences you presented in.

Several sources have compiled common positive and negative review points for proposals. And the publication and conference record was an important point in all of them (both positive and negative).

However, you can't compare the publication record of one person in Mathematics immediately after their PhD, and someone else in Biology 5 years after their PhD, and then make a conclusion on that. Both the field and the experience levels are very important.


And a quick search in the reviewers guide also says the exact same thing:

Don't penalize proposals if you think that the researchers' amount of publications is too low; however, you can penalize proposals if you think that the amount of publications is too low given his/her level of experience, and this may affect his/her professional development as an independent/mature researcher during the fellowship.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/fi ... uators.pdf (This is the 2018 version)

This exactly. This should end the personal opinion nonsense without backup.

[Dreamer]

From my point of view, this is very speculative to make decisions regarding just publication records. For example, in my case, I have had in RSC and ACS journals (not JACS ) over 20 publications in sum, but for me essential is the fact that I supervised two PhD thesis with 34 years. Also this bulshit with the first authorship. In my country mandatory is that PhD student that is under e.g. my supervision have the first authorship on 3 paper. This is mandatory for access to PhD defense. Although I organized the experiments and give ideas I must be just corresponding author, so.

[MSCA-ch]

It is also my second attempt and last year I got a comment on my cv ... but I'm not sure it was that relevant for the decision as in the guidelines such parameter it is not mentioned...

Cv usually has no impact on outcome. May I ask you to share the comment you have received?

They wrote "The publication record of the researcher is limited for their level of expertise"

A colleague of mine got the exact same comment last year. However, she got the fellowship.

I will leave this here for further discussions so we can distract ourselves: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/luck-of-the-draw

[Kenniz]

From my point of view, this is very speculative to make decisions regarding just publication records. For example, in my case, I have had in RSC and ACS journals (not JACS ) over 20 publications in sum, but for me essential is the fact that I supervised two PhD thesis with 34 years. Also this bulshit with the first authorship. In my country mandatory is that PhD student that is under e.g. my supervision have the first authorship on 3 paper. This is mandatory for access to PhD defense. Although I organized the experiments and give ideas I must be just corresponding author, so.

? there is no speculation. it is within the official review criteria

Don't penalize proposals if you think that the researchers' amount of publications is too low; however, you can penalize proposals if you think that the amount of publications is too low given his/her level of experience, and this may affect his/her professional development as an independent/mature researcher during the fellowship.
Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/info/fi ... uators.pdf (This is the 2018 version)

[Dreamer]

Yes my friend, could be very very speculative. As I text up I supervised 2 PhD thesis,but e.g I have 7 first authorship papers. And some stupid reviewers could type like YES,CV is OK,but with enough first authorship papers. And at the end FAILED.

[Dreamer]

And by the way, any evaluation process is very personal if reviewer like your proposal you will pass in opposite failed.Just same like peer reviewed process in scientific JOurnals.

[Kenniz]

Yes my friend, could be very very speculative. As I text up I supervised 2 PhD thesis,but e.g I have 7 first authorship papers. And some stupid reviewers could type like YES,CV is OK,but with enough first authorship papers. And at the end FAILED.

I really dont understand what you are writing here, sorry. The potential of a proposal being rejected despite having publications has nothing to do with the fact that publications are within the official evaluation criteria. Nothing speculative, facts, written in official documents.

[Kenniz]

And by the way, any evaluation process is very personal if reviewer like your proposal you will pass in opposite failed.Just same like peer reviewed process in scientific JOurnals.

Every evaluation process is personal and individual and might fail depending on luck. Nonetheless, MSCA criteria for evaluation take the publication history into account.

[LIF]

*snip

A colleague of mine got the exact same comment last year. However, she got the fellowship.

I will leave this here for further discussions so we can distract ourselves: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/luck-of-the-draw

Thanks for the link! I've recently had a discussion about this very topic with my (non-scientist) partner, and think that getting funding feels so random already, we should just make it official and start incorporating lottery-based systems into science funding. It couldn't be less efficient than the current systems