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

[dreamline]

It seems that today is not the 'date'

[megasphaera]

I guess it is automatic? I doubt they enter each score one by one. Maybe the evaluators and vice chairs upload score and report on a server and then everything else is sorted automatically. What do you guys think?
Anyway, as said before decision have been made already around december 2018, they only need to communicate us!

I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to be one of the data entry staff. A simple typo or switching two numbers can change someone's life and who knows if it even gets caught.

[IF ST LIF]

I guess it is automatic? I doubt they enter each score one by one. Maybe the evaluators and vice chairs upload score and report on a server and then everything else is sorted automatically. What do you guys think?
Anyway, as said before decision have been made already around december 2018, they only need to communicate us!

I can't imagine how terrifying it would be to be one of the data entry staff. A simple typo or switching two numbers can change someone's life and who knows if it even gets caught.

You are right. There is no need to manually enter the data. One of the PIs in my institution is an evaluator and he explained me that they have to do everything online. So from the moment that the evaluators finish, they have the reports and scores into the system. Should be pretty automatic from that moment on...

[ATBGF2017]

I cannot think of any other reason than this. After all, scores are already in the system. Ranking them should take only a few minutes. In any case, I believe the whole process is handled poorly.

My understanding is that most of the final leg of the funding allocation process goes quick as top ranked proposals are set against funding availability. However, then it gets more complex because they may have a some proposals that have equal scores but not enough money left to fund them all. They then have to sit down and discuss the proposals, look over experts comments, and generally flesh it out amongst themselves until they can agree who gets funded and who doesn't. To make myself clearer, if they have allocated 95% of funds to proposals above, say, 93%, and they then have 10 proposals that all scored 93 but only enough money to fund 5 of them, the process of deciding which 5 gets funded and which 5 doesn't, takes quite a bit of time. The 5 proposals that get the funding stay at 93, and the other 5 are demoted to 92.9, therefore they can present a nice clean cut off of 93.



I'm sure folks will be displeased when they consider that this is how things are done but they have to decide somehow.

No, the status changes to ranking way before the email.

It may have in the past, but I'm also in the camp that it may be different this time around. They did change the portal so changing the uploading/ranking process would make sense. It is quite possible that all the scores are in and they just wait until the end to press a button which ranks us all and sends out an automated email.

[lolome]

Considering that almost 10 thousand proposals have been evaluated in less that five months (including the Christmas break), I think it is a bit unfair to say that the whole process is handled poorly, to be honest.

We are all nervous, we all want our results, but the date that they gave us as indicative for us to get the results was 12th of February. So any day before that day, it would be a gift.

I say it again: almost 10 thousand applications in less that 5 months have been evaluated.

I cannot think of any other reason than this. After all, scores are already in the system. Ranking them should take only a few minutes. In any case, I believe the whole process is handled poorly.

My understanding is that most of the final leg of the funding allocation process goes quick as top ranked proposals are set against funding availability. However, then it gets more complex because they may have a some proposals that have equal scores but not enough money left to fund them all. They then have to sit down and discuss the proposals, look over experts comments, and generally flesh it out amongst themselves until they can agree who gets funded and who doesn't. To make myself clearer, if they have allocated 95% of funds to proposals above, say, 93%, and they then have 10 proposals that all scored 93 but only enough money to fund 5 of them, the process of deciding which 5 gets funded and which 5 doesn't, takes quite a bit of time. The 5 proposals that get the funding stay at 93, and the other 5 are demoted to 92.9, therefore they can present a nice clean cut off of 93.



I'm sure folks will be displeased when they consider that this is how things are done but they have to decide somehow.

It may have in the past, but I'm also in the camp that it may be different this time around. They did change the portal so changing the uploading/ranking process would make sense. It is quite possible that all the scores are in and they just wait until the end to press a button which ranks us all and sends out an automated email.

[ATBGF2017]

Correction: The process after evaluations are uploaded is handled poorly. What does not make sense to me is that: evaluators finish scoring 10000 projects in (roughly) 2,5 months, and ESR cannot sort and communicate these to the applicants in 2 months? Come on...

Considering that almost 10 thousand proposals have been evaluated in less that five months (including the Christmas break), I think it is a bit unfair to say that the whole process is handled poorly, to be honest.

We are all nervous, we all want our results, but the date that they gave us as indicative for us to get the results was 12th of February. So any day before that day, it would be a gift.

I say it again: almost 10 thousand applications in less that 5 months have been evaluated.

I cannot think of any other reason than this. After all, scores are already in the system. Ranking them should take only a few minutes. In any case, I believe the whole process is handled poorly.

My understanding is that most of the final leg of the funding allocation process goes quick as top ranked proposals are set against funding availability. However, then it gets more complex because they may have a some proposals that have equal scores but not enough money left to fund them all. They then have to sit down and discuss the proposals, look over experts comments, and generally flesh it out amongst themselves until they can agree who gets funded and who doesn't. To make myself clearer, if they have allocated 95% of funds to proposals above, say, 93%, and they then have 10 proposals that all scored 93 but only enough money to fund 5 of them, the process of deciding which 5 gets funded and which 5 doesn't, takes quite a bit of time. The 5 proposals that get the funding stay at 93, and the other 5 are demoted to 92.9, therefore they can present a nice clean cut off of 93.



I'm sure folks will be displeased when they consider that this is how things are done but they have to decide somehow.

[UlysesWalk]

Totally agree!!

Correction: The process after evaluations are uploaded is handled poorly. What does not make sense to me is that: evaluators finish scoring 10000 projects in (roughly) 2,5 months, and ESR cannot sort and communicate these to the applicants in 2 months? Come on...

Considering that almost 10 thousand proposals have been evaluated in less that five months (including the Christmas break), I think it is a bit unfair to say that the whole process is handled poorly, to be honest.

We are all nervous, we all want our results, but the date that they gave us as indicative for us to get the results was 12th of February. So any day before that day, it would be a gift.

I say it again: almost 10 thousand applications in less that 5 months have been evaluated.

I cannot think of any other reason than this. After all, scores are already in the system. Ranking them should take only a few minutes. In any case, I believe the whole process is handled poorly.

[lolome]

I think that they need the time for the ethical considerations of those projects that need it, and for what Bren wrote above, which is not trivial.

I still consider that five months is not that bad for what it is. To publish one paper with two reviewers could even take longer...

Totally agree!!

Correction: The process after evaluations are uploaded is handled poorly. What does not make sense to me is that: evaluators finish scoring 10000 projects in (roughly) 2,5 months, and ESR cannot sort and communicate these to the applicants in 2 months? Come on...

Considering that almost 10 thousand proposals have been evaluated in less that five months (including the Christmas break), I think it is a bit unfair to say that the whole process is handled poorly, to be honest.

We are all nervous, we all want our results, but the date that they gave us as indicative for us to get the results was 12th of February. So any day before that day, it would be a gift.

I say it again: almost 10 thousand applications in less that 5 months have been evaluated.

[danGFSOC]

Exactly.

After the evaluation and ranking phase is completed (so from the second week of December), applications that are "likely to be funded" (quotation from the guide for applicants) are screened for ethical issues by ethics evaluators and for obtaining ethics clearance/approval (which is "compulsory" for getting the funding). For those applications that are likely to be funded, but whose ethical issues were not properly, clearly or thoroughly considered/explained, applicants may be asked to work on the issues highlighted by ethics evaluators (as I know from a friend, which was contacted before knowing the result, and as written by a guy last year in this forum). The applicants have few weeks to send what the evaluators ask (normally explained in the ethics section in part A and B2, which is not evaluated by "normal" evaluators). After that, the application is re-checked for ethical approval (and it is very likely that will be funded). Obviously, this process takes time...

I think that they need the time for the ethical considerations of those projects that need it, and for what Bren wrote above, which is not trivial.

I still consider that five months is not that bad for what it is. To publish one paper with two reviewers could even take longer...

Totally agree!!

Correction: The process after evaluations are uploaded is handled poorly. What does not make sense to me is that: evaluators finish scoring 10000 projects in (roughly) 2,5 months, and ESR cannot sort and communicate these to the applicants in 2 months? Come on...

[dreamline]

Does anybody get a phase of "RANKING" yet?