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

karbonnom
Posts: 54
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:33 pm

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

Post by karbonnom » Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:18 am

trina_80 wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:52 am
karbonnom wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:45 am
For those who got it with a UK host, this was sent to me by my NCP:

You may be aware that the UK has still not formally associated to the Horizon Europe programme and until we do associate, we cannot sign a Grant Agreement with the EU.

To overcome this, the UK government has provided a guarantee of UKRI funding for any successful UK applicant to the programme. This guarantee covers successful applications under a number of calls including this one, and includes all calls where the grant agreement is expected to be signed before the end of 2022.
See the top document on this link: https://www.ukri.org/publications/horiz ... -guidance/
Your call is noted on page 17 as one of those in the second wave of the guarantee.

So funding for the project is secure, but unless there is an extremely fast end to the UK/EU negotiations regarding our association to Horizon Europe, it does mean that your project will be funded through UK resources. There are no additional ‘review’ hurdles to obtain this money. There will be various admin tasks by me/Research Services because we need to complete some additional admin processes to register the project on the UKRI systems rather than the EU portal. I will take care of this, specific guidance is being made available on a call by call basis. Our team is now managing many awards that are going to be funded by the UK Govt and so we are becoming familiar with the processes.

TLDR: UK is not yet associated with the Horizon Program but funding is still secure (money will come from UKRI).
Thank you so much for sharing this! Do you guys think that if the grants in UK will ultimately be funded from UK resources all those leftover funds will go into funding more proposals that are currently on the reserve lists?
It seems like from what I have understood from this forum that instead of pooling money with Horizon, UK will probably just use that money directly for funding. In that case, it will not affect the pool of money with Horizon that can fund other people. This is just a speculation though so don't take my word for it!

trina_80
Posts: 285
Joined: Fri Jan 08, 2021 9:41 am

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

Post by trina_80 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:32 am

karbonnom wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:18 am
trina_80 wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:52 am
karbonnom wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:45 am
For those who got it with a UK host, this was sent to me by my NCP:

You may be aware that the UK has still not formally associated to the Horizon Europe programme and until we do associate, we cannot sign a Grant Agreement with the EU.

To overcome this, the UK government has provided a guarantee of UKRI funding for any successful UK applicant to the programme. This guarantee covers successful applications under a number of calls including this one, and includes all calls where the grant agreement is expected to be signed before the end of 2022.
See the top document on this link: https://www.ukri.org/publications/horiz ... -guidance/
Your call is noted on page 17 as one of those in the second wave of the guarantee.

So funding for the project is secure, but unless there is an extremely fast end to the UK/EU negotiations regarding our association to Horizon Europe, it does mean that your project will be funded through UK resources. There are no additional ‘review’ hurdles to obtain this money. There will be various admin tasks by me/Research Services because we need to complete some additional admin processes to register the project on the UKRI systems rather than the EU portal. I will take care of this, specific guidance is being made available on a call by call basis. Our team is now managing many awards that are going to be funded by the UK Govt and so we are becoming familiar with the processes.

TLDR: UK is not yet associated with the Horizon Program but funding is still secure (money will come from UKRI).
Thank you so much for sharing this! Do you guys think that if the grants in UK will ultimately be funded from UK resources all those leftover funds will go into funding more proposals that are currently on the reserve lists?
It seems like from what I have understood from this forum that instead of pooling money with Horizon, UK will probably just use that money directly for funding. In that case, it will not affect the pool of money with Horizon that can fund other people. This is just a speculation though so don't take my word for it!
Thank you for your answer. This seems like the most intuitive course of action. However, given that a budget has already been approved for this call, wouldn't they have to maintain it? They would just cut UK's chunk out of it, in case they don't reach an agreement?

dramaQueen90
Posts: 17
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2022 10:46 am

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

Post by dramaQueen90 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 11:41 am

Hi! Did they share info regarding cut-off and the numbers of grants assigned for each country? Just curiosity

argy20
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2022 11:05 am

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

Post by argy20 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 1:17 pm

Topsyturvy wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:58 am
argy20 wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:36 am
sa6shah wrote:
Mon Mar 21, 2022 6:22 pm


Hi Argy
Concerning Era, and
Except the letter entitled "additional information..." which can be found in the Evaluation result letter/ Process documents,
Have you received something more?
Unfortunately not yet. But I provided my proposal number and title to the local NCP (in Greece) and he confirmed that I am funded. I guess I will ask him when we are expected to receive a grant agreement form. There was already an issue with Greece's involvement in ERA, as it was our first year in the scheme. Perhaps that is why there's this issue. Are you in Greece as well?
I am not in Greece but have ERA and I have also not received an additional letter (besides the one that tells you you have been allocated for funding). But I have now been told by multiple sources I have funding. We probably just have to wait a bit longer.
It looks like. Could be even worse in my case as I have a 3-month secondment in a UK University so this could also lead to extra conflicts. Do please update if you receive a grant agreement.

argy20
Posts: 8
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2022 11:05 am

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

Post by argy20 » Tue Mar 22, 2022 1:18 pm

sa6shah wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 10:09 am
argy20 wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 9:36 am
sa6shah wrote:
Mon Mar 21, 2022 6:22 pm


Hi Argy
Concerning Era, and
Except the letter entitled "additional information..." which can be found in the Evaluation result letter/ Process documents,
Have you received something more?
Unfortunately not yet. But I provided my proposal number and title to the local NCP (in Greece) and he confirmed that I am funded. I guess I will ask him when we are expected to receive a grant agreement form. There was already an issue with Greece's involvement in ERA, as it was our first year in the scheme. Perhaps that is why there's this issue. Are you in Greece as well?
Thanks Argy. I will also inform my NCP to check this matter.
I'm from Iran - wants to move to Poland
I see. Lots of different variables then. Congrats.

aguiarea
Posts: 11
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:01 pm

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

Post by aguiarea » Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:16 pm

Hello everyone, does anyone know what the deadline to start the project is in the case of MSCA ER? Thanks so much!

oldchap
Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Mar 01, 2022 12:05 pm

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

Post by oldchap » Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:23 pm

The quartiles for MSCA PF 2021 is published.
download.png
download.png (237.73 KiB) Viewed 119467 times

alherpo
Posts: 88
Joined: Wed Feb 23, 2022 1:38 pm

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

Post by alherpo » Tue Mar 22, 2022 5:10 pm

aguiarea wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 2:16 pm
Hello everyone, does anyone know what the deadline to start the project is in the case of MSCA ER? Thanks so much!
Probably 30 sep 2023

player
Posts: 6
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2022 5:43 pm

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

Post by player » Tue Mar 22, 2022 6:01 pm

Hi all,

I lurked a bit this forum in the last 2-3 weeks waiting for the results and would like to thank the creators. I didn’t win the grant (3,8/3,8/4,4). I applied for first time and very likely I will not retry, as this year is busier for me. I worked on the proposal quite seriously between mid-May to mid-June and from very late August to the deadline and received decent feedback from my host; I know that many people devote much more time and having seen my proposal with clear eyes after the deadline, I knew that there were some flaws, was not very optimistic about the outcome and not very frustrated now. I’m writing only to share a few thoughts on the evaluation process – I see many colleagues frustrated from that especially about receiving a worse note after resubmission and regardless of their effort to use the feedback. I have some experience on decision processes (not only in research) and tried to understand the EC process. I feel that we have (at least) the following issues here:

1)The proposals must be evaluated quickly; reviewers must complete the task in a few weeks. They devote little time to each proposal and must decide about the grade in a short meeting. There is no further monitoring of the meeting’s decision. When people do things quickly and feel that there is no strict control on their decisions, superficiality can gain ground. In my case, the evaluation was not rushed (I felt that they read the proposal quite carefully), but since so many people complain about sloppy reviews, this seems to be an issue.

2)The proposals are not necessarily evaluated by direct experts in each field, but from people working in the same area more broadly. This is not an easy task. Therefore, participants are advised to write simply. However, research often deals with complicated ideas that cannot be easily analyzed in a very simple way nor can be smoothly understood by someone without a strong command in a particular subfield. This likely gives an advantage to people working on catchy topics (which attract the attention of outsiders) and to those working in more established disciplines (although interdisciplinarity is a target in theory). It is hard to expect a high-quality review on an interdisciplinary idea by experts combining a strong command on all its areas in a short time. These people are hard to be found and often are established scientists who will not evaluate MSCA proposals.

3) Resubmissions do not go to the reviewers who commented on the rejected version but to new reviewers. New people will have different interests/ methodological preferences and so on and no access (as far as I have understood at least) to the rejected version and feedback. Even if they had such access, to compare two drafts and evaluate changes (even more without a point-to-point response) is a very time-consuming task. The problem is obvious, but I don't see how the proposals can be evaluated by the same people given that the pool of reviewers changes from year to year and without introducing a stage of response by the applicant/evaluation of response which would delay a lot the whole process.

I feel that the main problem is the huge size of the task itself: the evaluation of about 9,000 proposals within a few months. I could think on various ways to improve the process (further monitoring of the panels’ decisions; evaluation of each proposal by experts working especially in this area; introduction of a response process for resubmissions), but all these options require even more time and I don’t know how many participants would be happy to wait much more than now for the consideration of their application. In sum, it is obvious that the process has big problems, but is tough for me to imagine a more reliable alternative which would not cost much more time.

Just a few thoughts – best wishes to all of you and congrats to those who won.

Fu Manchu
Posts: 99
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 5:43 pm

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

Post by Fu Manchu » Tue Mar 22, 2022 7:08 pm

player wrote:
Tue Mar 22, 2022 6:01 pm
Hi all,

I lurked a bit this forum in the last 2-3 weeks waiting for the results and would like to thank the creators. I didn’t win the grant (3,8/3,8/4,4). I applied for first time and very likely I will not retry, as this year is busier for me. I worked on the proposal quite seriously between mid-May to mid-June and from very late August to the deadline and received decent feedback from my host; I know that many people devote much more time and having seen my proposal with clear eyes after the deadline, I knew that there were some flaws, was not very optimistic about the outcome and not very frustrated now. I’m writing only to share a few thoughts on the evaluation process – I see many colleagues frustrated from that especially about receiving a worse note after resubmission and regardless of their effort to use the feedback. I have some experience on decision processes (not only in research) and tried to understand the EC process. I feel that we have (at least) the following issues here:

1)The proposals must be evaluated quickly; reviewers must complete the task in a few weeks. They devote little time to each proposal and must decide about the grade in a short meeting. There is no further monitoring of the meeting’s decision. When people do things quickly and feel that there is no strict control on their decisions, superficiality can gain ground. In my case, the evaluation was not rushed (I felt that they read the proposal quite carefully), but since so many people complain about sloppy reviews, this seems to be an issue.

2)The proposals are not necessarily evaluated by direct experts in each field, but from people working in the same area more broadly. This is not an easy task. Therefore, participants are advised to write simply. However, research often deals with complicated ideas that cannot be easily analyzed in a very simple way nor can be smoothly understood by someone without a strong command in a particular subfield. This likely gives an advantage to people working on catchy topics (which attract the attention of outsiders) and to those working in more established disciplines (although interdisciplinarity is a target in theory). It is hard to expect a high-quality review on an interdisciplinary idea by experts combining a strong command on all its areas in a short time. These people are hard to be found and often are established scientists who will not evaluate MSCA proposals.

3) Resubmissions do not go to the reviewers who commented on the rejected version but to new reviewers. New people will have different interests/ methodological preferences and so on and no access (as far as I have understood at least) to the rejected version and feedback. Even if they had such access, to compare two drafts and evaluate changes (even more without a point-to-point response) is a very time-consuming task. The problem is obvious, but I don't see how the proposals can be evaluated by the same people given that the pool of reviewers changes from year to year and without introducing a stage of response by the applicant/evaluation of response which would delay a lot the whole process.

I feel that the main problem is the huge size of the task itself: the evaluation of about 9,000 proposals within a few months. I could think on various ways to improve the process (further monitoring of the panels’ decisions; evaluation of each proposal by experts working especially in this area; introduction of a response process for resubmissions), but all these options require even more time and I don’t know how many participants would be happy to wait much more than now for the consideration of their application. In sum, it is obvious that the process has big problems, but is tough for me to imagine a more reliable alternative which would not cost much more time.

Just a few thoughts – best wishes to all of you and congrats to those who won.
Thanks for sharing.

However, I think there are more feasible solutions to the third aspect.

1- Write a specific section that deal with last year's comments in the proposal - it can be a summary of what was changed and where these changes are.

2- The reviewers should read the former evaluation reports. It takes 10-15 minutes to read one at most.

3- Give more time to the evaluators. We all received the results in March and nobody died because of it. It happened because of the delay - deadline was only in October and usually it is on September. Why not make the deadline in September and the results in March?

These are all small changes that can help the reviewers and the evaluation itself.

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