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

[Kenniz]

That's crazy man. And then when I say that some reviewers are stupid, people get pissed off!!!
I cannot understand how a proposal which scored so high on the next year get such a low score. This confirms that this is just a fucking lottery

i am too bored to quote you. but noone got pissed off. you said: reviewers are stupid for not looking in to the guidelines and judging the number of publications. we proofed you were wrong because it is in the guidelines and then you said you would have never said such things. so please dont talk nonsense here and blame other people for your missinformation spreading,, thanks

I was only joking....
I said many times I was wrong about the fact that they can penalise if they think publication record is not enough.

See how you need to relax a bit? And maybe read a bit better.

i think you need to improve your english writing/reading capabilites more or stop spreading missinformation. noone got pissed of because you said the reviewers were stupid, as the only circumstance you said this was during my aforementioned discussion (where you said this in the context of reading the guidelines). you also never said it was a joke, you only said you would have never said such a thing. and lastly, you never mentioned stupid reviewers in another context. you contradict yourself with nearly every post here. maybe you should take a break? the only reason people get pissed of is, when you make stuff up about them

[megasphaera]

I said I was joking about the fact that people get pissed off if I say that reviewers are stupid. I was only teasing you. I don't want to spread misleading info, I just want to give my opinion and help people if I can. That's why if you check earlier posts I said that I was wrong about the publication thing (regarding the penalization based on papers).

I am sorry if you are taking my latest comments so badly, I apologise.

From my side I think that the evaluation process is flawed and I am not too happy about last year comments (on certain sections), that's why I say some reviewers are stupid. I am just an old angry man.

[Kenniz]

I said I was joking about the fact that people get pissed off if I say that reviewers are stupid. I was only teasing you. I don't want to spread misleading info, I just want to give my opinion and help people if I can. That's why if you check earlier posts I said that I was wrong about the publication thing (regarding the penalization based on papers).

I am sorry if you are taking my latest comments so badly, I apologise.

From my side I think that the evaluation process is flawed and I am not too happy about last year comments (on certain sections), that's why I say some reviewers are stupid. I am just an old angry man.

We all are atleast angry

[PetetheCat]

Unfortunately true, it happened to me. Applied twice, first time got 91, fixed the proposal following the comments and i got a 76 ...I am curious this year!

This also happened to me. And both myself and my supervisor thought at first that it was a rejection for this year. He sent an email saying that he was shocked and copying in the department research manager asking if we could find new avenues to try and get my project funded. And then realizing that there was no evaluation in the portal and that the application for this year still said that it was pending, I figured it out. What a horrible 30 minutes of rejected feelings. My proposal was reviewed very well last year and we worked really hard to tighten it up this year, so it was a shocking feeling that it would do worse than before.

Hopefully you will get it and I wish you good luck. However, just to let you know, there are plenty of people that submitted a better version and answered reviewers comment and got a much lower score.

This much I know! But the only thing I have going for me is that I am applying with a department where there is a strong record of MSCA success and they are very good at working with applicants they think have a chance of success, with extra support for those on the reserve list previously. But it all comes down to those reviewers, so who knows . . . At least now I know how I will feel if I am rejected. Not a good feeling, but I will survive

[LIF]

If I may pitch in, I totally get the frustration about the seemingly random scores. But I believe that the vast majority of the reviewers do their best to evaluate the proposals they get. And if you've ever submitted papers, had a proposal of yours read by different people, or discussed your research with people from outside your immediate field, you probably have noticed that different people pick up on different things, simply because they may know more about this specific part, have practical experience with something similar, or just find it more interesting than other parts.

It doesn't mean that their opinion isn't valid, they are simply judging the science you are serving them from different view points. So, one year you might have reviewers that can fully understand and judge the quality of your proposal and give you a high score. The next year, you get different reviewers who come from more distantly related fields, have less background knowledge and cannot understand the implications of your research that are maybe not written out explicitly, and therefore give you a lower score.

So, even though the evaluation feels really random, I think everyone can try and make their proposal as accessible as possible and spell out things that seem super-obvious to them. That's also one of the most recurring tips I've heard and read regarding such proposals: be really really clear, concrete and help your reviewers understand why your research is important and relevant. They might not have the time to read between your lines, so better serve them your core message on a silver plate.

[megasphaera]

Unfortunately true, it happened to me. Applied twice, first time got 91, fixed the proposal following the comments and i got a 76 ...I am curious this year!

Hopefully you will get it and I wish you good luck. However, just to let you know, there are plenty of people that submitted a better version and answered reviewers comment and got a much lower score.

This much I know! But the only thing I have going for me is that I am applying with a department where there is a strong record of MSCA success and they are very good at working with applicants they think have a chance of success, with extra support for those on the reserve list previously. But it all comes down to those reviewers, so who knows . . . At least now I know how I will feel if I am rejected. Not a good feeling, but I will survive

As far as I know having the backup of a strong institution with a good record of msca is a big plus. My institution from last year for example had no idea on msca fellowship, so 0 help and a wonderful final score

[SimpaLif]

Slower refreshing of the link?

[MSCA_CHEM_2019]

Slower refreshing of the link?

Submission for me

[Dreamer7]

very slow..

[Shapovalov]

(Similar point to what LIF just made, but from a different perspective)

I'm going to go against the grain and say that huge discrepancies between scores of re-submissions is not surprising. Not say that it is correct, just that it is understandable why this happens. What's worse is that there is absolutely no reasonable solution to it.

The main point here is not about harsh vs lenient reviewers. It's about getting reviewers who understand the broad topic of your proposal.

Let's start with the case of reviewers for a paper. The choice of reviewer already plays a huge role there. Even though it is just one paper, you have provided loads of keywords, and suggested a whole bunch of experts in the field as potential reviewers, journals often struggle to find a suitable reviewer. I've had a paper where the journal took months over their usual response time because they could not find enough reviewers. And, in theory, it should be a lot easier for papers than proposals.

To have that strict a standard for proposal submitted to such a big call is not practical at all. You would need maybe 10k+ reviewers for the 10k proposals. I don't remember the number of experts from previous years, but I would expect it to be significantly lesser than this. If so, it is inevitable for such a big call that reviewers will get proposals in fields that are not in their specialty. And then all bets are off. They may not understand the whole point of the proposal, and then will end up scoring it very badly.