Only related to "Reserve list" Q&A 2022

[Praba]

Moreover, I am having doubt in the NCPs numbers for the reserve list candidates in EF-CHE panel. German and France NCPs told that it is 40+ UK based candidates in EF-CHE panel. But some other NCPs told it is 25. In the last year, 40+ reserve list ranked guy got an invitation in EF-CHE panel. So, the numbers are not clear to me.

I was about to make a comment/question about this, actually: do we have any reliable statistics about the UK fractions? Any official documents maybe? Because 50 projects in ENG, 40 in CHE, etc, amounts to 20%+ of all projects. Also, if the 241 missing projects are all UK, that's 22% (241/1093, presumably the UK can't be destination for both MSCA-GF and -EF), which would be consistent. But the EU has 27 member states, and there's additional associated countries, so I'm finding it difficult to believe that the UK gets a quarter of all projects. Especially since in Horizon 2020 it seems to have gotten ~12% of the total funding, according to official reports. The only way I can reconcile these two things is that the UK is massively overrepresented in MSCA and underrepresented in the other categories, like ERC grants, which would be good for us in this forum, but a bit weird...

Regarding the distribution: the different panels have different cutoffs, which means that the budgets for a given category must have been allocated before looking at projects (so e.g. allocated money for physics can cover projects down to a score of 92.4, but for ECO there's enough money to go below 90). So if the UK drops out this would likely not change how the money is distributed between panels (the entire point is that the overall budget remains the same, but certain projects drop out), and so the budget should still be distributed within panels. It also simply doesn't make sense to have reserve lists for individual panels if they then start distributing between panels.

Regarding the reliable data, I could not find any. I have been reading last year's thread of "funded from reserve list", as the UK situation was pretty much the same last year I thought it could give me an indication of what to expect. However I could not find much info, a lot of happy people cause they got their signature agreements, haha. Some did indicate their position in the reserve list but all of them were pretty high up (4th, 5th something like that). I didn't see anyone saying "hey guys I was 20th in the reserve list and I go it!!", which again according to my NCP is quite impossible.

Yes, that is true that we do not know the exact number of UK-based selected candidates and how they are distributed in each panels. Only we have to rely on the NCPs for numbers and it is differing between NCPs.

[ExAstris]

There was one guy who was apparently lower on the list, though the post is written a bit cryptic. If I interpret it correctly this was CHE, with 149 initially funded projects, and projects between 150 and ~220 on the reserve list. He was apparently number 192 and got funded. It's on page 38 of last years reserve list thread. But as I said, in not sure I'm reading this correctly.

[Praba]

There was one guy who was apparently lower on the list, though the post is written a bit cryptic. If I interpret it correctly this was CHE, with 149 initially funded projects, and projects between 150 and ~220 on the reserve list. He was apparently number 192 and got funded. It's on page 38 of last years reserve list thread. But as I said, in not sure I'm reading this correctly.

Yes, I was mentioned about this guy. This comment is bit confusing, but I understood as you mentioned the same.

[Praba]

Moreover, I am having doubt in the NCPs numbers for the reserve list candidates in EF-CHE panel. German and France NCPs told that it is 40+ UK based candidates in EF-CHE panel. But some other NCPs told it is 25. In the last year, 40+ reserve list ranked guy got an invitation in EF-CHE panel. So, the numbers are not clear to me.

I was about to make a comment/question about this, actually: do we have any reliable statistics about the UK fractions? Any official documents maybe? Because 50 projects in ENG, 40 in CHE, etc, amounts to 20%+ of all projects. Also, if the 241 missing projects are all UK, that's 22% (241/1093, presumably the UK can't be destination for both MSCA-GF and -EF), which would be consistent. But the EU has 27 member states, and there's additional associated countries, so I'm finding it difficult to believe that the UK gets a quarter of all projects. Especially since in Horizon 2020 it seems to have gotten ~12% of the total funding, according to official reports. The only way I can reconcile these two things is that the UK is massively overrepresented in MSCA and underrepresented in the other categories, like ERC grants, which would be good for us in this forum, but a bit weird...

Regarding the distribution: the different panels have different cutoffs, which means that the budgets for a given category must have been allocated before looking at projects (so e.g. allocated money for physics can cover projects down to a score of 92.4, but for ECO there's enough money to go below 90). So if the UK drops out this would likely not change how the money is distributed between panels (the entire point is that the overall budget remains the same, but certain projects drop out), and so the budget should still be distributed within panels. It also simply doesn't make sense to have reserve lists for individual panels if they then start distributing between panels.

Regarding the reliable data, I could not find any. I have been reading last year's thread of "funded from reserve list", as the UK situation was pretty much the same last year I thought it could give me an indication of what to expect. However I could not find much info, a lot of happy people cause they got their signature agreements, haha. Some did indicate their position in the reserve list but all of them were pretty high up (4th, 5th something like that). I didn't see anyone saying "hey guys I was 20th in the reserve list and I go it!!", which again according to my NCP is quite impossible.

Personally I feel it is quite good number. Though your reserve list ranking is 20, if I understand correctly, it is before excluding the UK-based reserve list candidates. So, if you excluding those numbers, you might be in 15-16th position.

And, ofcourse you should be in the top 10 positions for getting funded is true, but it is very wide statement. Few NCPs they are not giving any concrete statements, even I felt different people in the same NCPs are giving answers differently, like one siad you are in the 4th position in reserve list and one UK candidate is before you. And other said you are one of the top 10 candidates but we cant give you exact number and can't comment about UK-based candidates.

[ExAstris]

After a bit more digging I found a reference to a German webpage (www.nks-msc.de) in the 2021 thread that has additional info for 2022:

There are 207 UK hosted projects that were selected, 4 of which are GF, the rest EF. The budget is allocated to number of eligible projects, so if e.g. a panel has 23.4% of all eligible proposals (6909 in total this year), it gets 23.4% of the overall budget allocated (though EF and GF are handled differently, apparently, and there is no flow from one to the other). So there will presumably be indeed a bit of rejigging of budgets, because the UK proposals will not be equally distributed. This is done so that the success rate is the same in all panels.

So the ~200 number is correct and for a panel like CHE, that gets ~15% of the budget, something like ~30 additional funded projects is realistic.

[PROSCO]

After a bit more digging I found a reference to a German webpage (www.nks-msc.de) in the 2021 thread that has additional info for 2022:

There are 207 UK hosted projects that were selected, 4 of which are GF, the rest EF. The budget is allocated to number of eligible projects, so if e.g. a panel has 23.4% of all eligible proposals (6909 in total this year), it gets 23.4% of the overall budget allocated (though EF and GF are handled differently, apparently, and there is no flow from one to the other). So there will presumably be indeed a bit of rejigging of budgets, because the UK proposals will not be equally distributed. This is done so that the success rate is the same in all panels.

So the ~200 number is correct and for a panel like CHE, that gets ~15% of the budget, something like ~30 additional funded projects is realistic.

Hi, ExAstris.

I was notified from my German Host and NCP that there were 50 funded project with UK host in EF-ENG panel alone. They were surprised at the high number as well, but I was not able to get the proofing data.

It would be nice if you can explain what you mean by rejigging of budget? I was informed from my German NCP that the number of dropouts due to UK-HE association failure will be given to the reserves of the same panel. But you are implying that the total dropout seats from the UK funded projects will be distributed across the panels to meet the same success rate?

[ExAstris]

It would be nice if you can explain what you mean by rejigging of budget? I was informed from my German NCP that the number of dropouts due to UK-HE association failure will be given to the reserves of the same panel. But you are implying that the total dropout seats from the UK funded projects will be distributed across the panels to meet the same success rate?

I mean that it is possible that with 1149 of 6909 projects dropping out the (apparently) overriding wish to have similar success rates means they might go back to redo the allocation of the budgets.

If only a handful of projects drop out (the normal operating mode without an entire country dropping out), the approach to simply pick the next project off the reserve list for that particular panel makes sense, because the number of projects decreases by fractions of percents, and so the success rate will only change by fractions of percents. But if a major portion drops out, success rates may suddenly differ a lot between panels, and if they don't want that they have to recalculate the budget allocation. As an example: CHE now has ~15% of proposals, so gets 15% of budget. Hypothetically, if the UK was massively overrepresented here, and without the UK projects CHE had only 10% of the remaining projects, it would be weird to still keep the initially allocated 15%. CHE would have much higher success rate than the other panels. So they might decide to recalculate and allocate 10% instead. I'm not saying this is definitely how they do it, but it would be a possibility based on how the budgets are supposed to be split up: by number of applications, which massively changed on the 17th.

To be clear: this would still likely be a small rebalance, because the number of applications is probably close to equally distributed, and so the naive approach of "23 projects drop out, so 23 reserves get selected" will be close to true, but I could envision deviations of one or two from this estimate, based on a rebalance.

[XmendeleievX]

It would be nice if you can explain what you mean by rejigging of budget? I was informed from my German NCP that the number of dropouts due to UK-HE association failure will be given to the reserves of the same panel. But you are implying that the total dropout seats from the UK funded projects will be distributed across the panels to meet the same success rate?

I mean that it is possible that with 1149 of 6909 projects dropping out the (apparently) overriding wish to have similar success rates means they might go back to redo the allocation of the budgets.

If only a handful of projects drop out (the normal operating mode without an entire country dropping out), the approach to simply pick the next project off the reserve list for that particular panel makes sense, because the number of projects decreases by fractions of percents, and so the success rate will only change by fractions of percents. But if a major portion drops out, success rates may suddenly differ a lot between panels, and if they don't want that they have to recalculate the budget allocation. As an example: CHE now has ~15% of proposals, so gets 15% of budget. Hypothetically, if the UK was massively overrepresented here, and without the UK projects CHE had only 10% of the remaining projects, it would be weird to still keep the initially allocated 15%. CHE would have much higher success rate than the other panels. So they might decide to recalculate and allocate 10% instead. I'm not saying this is definitely how they do it, but it would be a possibility based on how the budgets are supposed to be split up: by number of applications, which massively changed on the 17th.

To be clear: this would still likely be a small rebalance, because the number of applications is probably close to equally distributed, and so the naive approach of "23 projects drop out, so 23 reserves get selected" will be close to true, but I could envision deviations of one or two from this estimate, based on a rebalance.

This far your reasoning is the one I believe makes more sense. And yes my 20th position is includying the UK people, which are now in a terrible limbo btw. When I got my evaluation I inmediatly thought "I'll have to apply again", In fact I am working on my proposal already (for the 5th bloody time). But now I see some hope here+!

[Praba]

It would be nice if you can explain what you mean by rejigging of budget? I was informed from my German NCP that the number of dropouts due to UK-HE association failure will be given to the reserves of the same panel. But you are implying that the total dropout seats from the UK funded projects will be distributed across the panels to meet the same success rate?

I mean that it is possible that with 1149 of 6909 projects dropping out the (apparently) overriding wish to have similar success rates means they might go back to redo the allocation of the budgets.

If only a handful of projects drop out (the normal operating mode without an entire country dropping out), the approach to simply pick the next project off the reserve list for that particular panel makes sense, because the number of projects decreases by fractions of percents, and so the success rate will only change by fractions of percents. But if a major portion drops out, success rates may suddenly differ a lot between panels, and if they don't want that they have to recalculate the budget allocation. As an example: CHE now has ~15% of proposals, so gets 15% of budget. Hypothetically, if the UK was massively overrepresented here, and without the UK projects CHE had only 10% of the remaining projects, it would be weird to still keep the initially allocated 15%. CHE would have much higher success rate than the other panels. So they might decide to recalculate and allocate 10% instead. I'm not saying this is definitely how they do it, but it would be a possibility based on how the budgets are supposed to be split up: by number of applications, which massively changed on the 17th.

To be clear: this would still likely be a small rebalance, because the number of applications is probably close to equally distributed, and so the naive approach of "23 projects drop out, so 23 reserves get selected" will be close to true, but I could envision deviations of one or two from this estimate, based on a rebalance.

This far your reasoning is the one I believe makes more sense. And yes my 20th position is includying the UK people, which are now in a terrible limbo btw. When I got my evaluation I inmediatly thought "I'll have to apply again", In fact I am working on my proposal already (for the 5th bloody time). But now I see some hope here+!

Btw did your Spain NCP told anything about when EC will start send an invitation to the reserve list candidates? It is taking longer than the last year.

[XmendeleievX]

I mean that it is possible that with 1149 of 6909 projects dropping out the (apparently) overriding wish to have similar success rates means they might go back to redo the allocation of the budgets.

If only a handful of projects drop out (the normal operating mode without an entire country dropping out), the approach to simply pick the next project off the reserve list for that particular panel makes sense, because the number of projects decreases by fractions of percents, and so the success rate will only change by fractions of percents. But if a major portion drops out, success rates may suddenly differ a lot between panels, and if they don't want that they have to recalculate the budget allocation. As an example: CHE now has ~15% of proposals, so gets 15% of budget. Hypothetically, if the UK was massively overrepresented here, and without the UK projects CHE had only 10% of the remaining projects, it would be weird to still keep the initially allocated 15%. CHE would have much higher success rate than the other panels. So they might decide to recalculate and allocate 10% instead. I'm not saying this is definitely how they do it, but it would be a possibility based on how the budgets are supposed to be split up: by number of applications, which massively changed on the 17th.

To be clear: this would still likely be a small rebalance, because the number of applications is probably close to equally distributed, and so the naive approach of "23 projects drop out, so 23 reserves get selected" will be close to true, but I could envision deviations of one or two from this estimate, based on a rebalance.

This far your reasoning is the one I believe makes more sense. And yes my 20th position is includying the UK people, which are now in a terrible limbo btw. When I got my evaluation I inmediatly thought "I'll have to apply again", In fact I am working on my proposal already (for the 5th bloody time). But now I see some hope here+!

Btw did your Spain NCP told anything about when EC will start send an invitation to the reserve list candidates? It is taking longer than the last year.

I am afraid not, I asked a couple of days ago but no reply yet.