I received a grant from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) program: between August 2024 and August of 2026, I will be at the University of Muenster, Germany, working on a project named PRISM: PReservation and RecognItion of Spatial patterns using Machine learning. The project’s primary goal is to develop and compare methods for validating and including spatial patterns in machine learning. You can read a short description of the project here.1
I am excited about the project and looking forward to the next two years, but this blog post is not about the project itself. Instead, I want to share some thoughts on the process of applying for the MSCA-PF grant. I hope this post will be helpful for others applying for this grant in the future, but also for grant providers and reviewers who might be interested in improving the process.2
MSCA-PF
In short, the MSCA-PF grant is a competitive grant aimed at early career researchers (up to 8 years after the PhD).3 The European Postdoctoral Fellowship allows researchers to work on a project of their choice for up to two in a host institution in Europe or associated countries. The aim of this grant is not only to support the research project but also to develop new skills and promote knowledge transfer between the researcher and the host institution. The MSCA-PF grant website also lists the following benefits of the grant: a living allowance, a mobility allowance (plus possibly also family, long-term leave, and special needs allowances) and funding for research, training, and networking activities, and management and indirect costs.
The grant proposal
The grant proposal consists of Part A (the administrative part filled in the online portal) and Part B (the scientific part uploaded as a PDF). Part B is divided into two subparts: B1 and B2.
Part B1 is the core part of the proposal and should contain details of the proposed research and training activities along with the practical arrangements proposed to implement them, etc. It is strictly restricted to 10 A4-sized pages, with font size and margin limitations. Part B2 has no page limit and contains the researcher’s CV, the capacity of the participating organization(s), and other related information.
The grant process has extensive documentation, which includes the main website, Q&A Blog, and many other documents, such as “The guide for Applicants”, “PF Handbook”, “Evaluation Form”, “How to complete your ethics self-assessment”, and many more. The extensive documentation, while comprehensive, can be overwhelming for applicants, as it far exceeds the length of the proposal itself.
Application process
After reading the documentation, the application process seems straightforward: you just fill out the online form, write Part B, and submit everything. I initially thought that my main issue would be the page limit of Part B1: how to fit all the ideas about the project into just 10 pages? The reality turned out to be quite different–the main issue was understanding what was actually expected in the proposal.
Part B1 has three main sections: (1) “Excellence”, (2) “Impact”, and (3) “Quality and Efficiency of the Implementation”. Then, each section has a number of subsections. For example, the “Excellence” section has the following subsections:
- “Quality and pertinence of the project’s research and innovation objectives (and the extent to which they are ambitious, and go beyond the state of the art).”
- “Soundness of the proposed methodology (including interdisciplinary approaches, consideration of the gender dimension and other diversity aspects if relevant for the research project, and the quality of open science practices).”
- “Quality of the supervision, training and of the two-way transfer of knowledge between the researcher and the host.”
- “Quality and appropriateness of the researcher’s professional experience, competences and skills.”
Then, each subsection has several bullet points that you are supposed to address in your proposal. For example, the first subsection has two bullet points, and the second subsection has five bullet points, etc. Spoiler alert: not addressing these bullet points may result in a lower reviewer’s score.
Moreover, throughout the grant proposal template, you may encounter various new terms and concepts that you need to understand and address. Some are probably well-known by seasoned grant writers but not by all early-career researchers. For example, you need to know the differences between dissemination, exploitation, and communication of the results; what’s “Data Management Plan (DMP)” or “Career Development Plan (CDP)”; what’s “Mobility declaration” or “Evaluation questionnaire”; how to address “Gender dimension and other diversity aspects”, “Environmental considerations in light of the MSCA Green Charter”, etc. These are defined in various documents available online, but it takes time to understand them and it is required to address them in the proposal.
To make things more complicated, the grant documentation also contains several hidden expectations. I got great help by talking to a previous MSCA-PF grant holder, local university advisors, and a KoWi advisor.4 Interestingly, they all pointed out different aspects (and hidden expectations) of the grant proposal. Thus, the process can feel like navigating a complex puzzle, with some elements not immediately apparent.
My rough estimation is that about 7 out of 10 pages of Part B1 relate to the expected information: you must address the bullet points, explain the concepts, and meet the hidden expectations. The remaining three pages, scattered throughout the proposal, are for the actual ideas behind the project (and some references).
The proposal’s structure may inadvertently encourage applicants to focus more on meeting specific criteria than on fully elaborating their research ideas. For example, there should be a part about “Open science practices” within the second subsection of Part B1. It does not matter if you are actually doing (or thinking about doing) open science5 – you need to write about it to get points. I think it teaches the wrong behavior to young researchers.
Let’s say you wrote a first draft of the text and are happy with it. Now, you need to format it to meet all formal expectations, such as font size, margins, page limits, and more. You may spend many hours moving the text around, changing the font sizes, and so on. Thus, I suggest leaving the formatting as one of the last steps of the proposal writing process.
In total, I spent about three months of part-time work on the grant proposal.6 I also suspect that the cumulative time investment across all applicants (of this single-person grant) is substantial, highlighting an opportunity to explore ways to streamline the application process.7
Reviewing process
After you submit the grant proposal (the deadline is usually in September), it goes through a reviewing process and the results are announced the following March. You can find the evaluation form at https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/docs/2021-2027/horizon/temp-form/ef/ef_he-msca_en.pdf. The form mainly focuses on the expected information. On the one hand, it makes sense: the reviewers need to try to be objective and evaluate the proposals based on the same criteria. On the other hand, there’s a chance that proposals that best meet the formal criteria score highly, which may not always align perfectly with identifying the most innovative research ideas.8
Celebration?
Now, let’s say that you got the grant. It is time for celebration filling out the grant agreement. This brings me to the topic of the online portals related to the MSCA-PF grant.9 Yes, portals. This is because there are several portals that you need to use during the application and project management phases. These portals are not very user-friendly, and each of them uses a different technology and visual style. It takes a lot of time to get used to them, understand which portal you need to use for which task, and how to navigate them. There seems to be room for improving the user experience and integration of these systems.
The fine print
Let’s end up with one important piece of information for those who are considering applying for the MSCA-PF grant. The grant promotes itself with a list of benefits: a living allowance, a mobility allowance (plus possibly also family, long-term leave, and special needs allowances), funding for research, training, networking activities, and management and indirect costs. The living allowance (that is supposed to cover your salary) depends on the country where you will be working, based on a correction factor for the cost of living, while the rest of the allowances are fixed. For example, in the 2023 edition of the grant, the living allowance for Germany was about 5,000 EUR per month, plus the mobility allowance of 600 EUR per month, and the family allowance of 660 EUR per month (plus some money for the research, training, and networking activities, and management and indirect costs).
What is not directly mentioned, however, is that every country (and even institutions in one country) has different rules about salary, taxes, and other benefits. For example, some universities in Germany will just hire you as a regular employee, and you will get a salary based on the pay scale. Thus, you won’t get the mobility and family allowances.10 Moreover, the grant funding can be treated in some (?) institutions as gross gross (brutto brutto), which means that the money will be first used to cover the employer’s costs, and then you will need to pay the taxes on the remaining money. Thus, the actual amount the researcher receives (netto) is significantly less than the total amount granted.
Given that the way the grant is treated may vary between countries and institutions, I think it is essential to ask about the details before applying for the grant. The best way is probably to contact a previous MSCA-PF grant holder from the institution where you plan to work and ask about all these details.
Conclusions
This may not be obvious after reading this blog post, but I am very happy I got the grant and excited about the project. If I could go back in time knowing all of the above, I would still apply for the MSCA-PF grant. This grant format is an excellent opportunity for researchers to move to a different environment, learn new skills, and develop new ideas.
That being said, I think the grant proposal process could be greatly improved. The complexity of the application process (evidenced by the extensive documentation required for a relatively short proposal) suggests that there may be opportunities to improve the procedure. Currently, it puts a lot of pressure and a high time burden on the applicants and may lead to a situation where the best proposals are not funded.11 This, combined with many hidden expectations, document formatting, and user-unfriendly online portals, makes the whole process even more time-consuming: it could require thousands of hours of young researchers’ work.
I think the grant proposal process should be much simplified and streamlined. While I understand the need for evaluation criteria and objectivity, I think the current system is not the best way to achieve this. In my opinion, the focus of the proposal should be on the research ideas, the potential of the applicants, and the transfer of knowledge, not on the ability to fill in the expected information. A good example of a grant proposal process that I think is much better12 is the Humboldt Research Fellowship, which has one simple online portal and fairly straightforward expectations – the focus is on the research ideas and the potential of the applicants, and the whole application process is less surprising and much less time-consuming.
I hope you found this post helpful – if you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me. And now, it’s time to pack my bags.
Footnotes
I also plan to write a few blog posts about the project, so stay tuned!↩︎
It will be useful for me to clear my thoughts and reflect on the process.↩︎
The acceptance rate in 2024 was about 15%.↩︎
Thank you!↩︎
I strongly encourage it.↩︎
Of course, I was also working on several other projects, teaching, etc., at the same time.↩︎
About 8,000 applicants multiplied by 3 months is 2,000 years of part-time work of a highly educated person.↩︎
As pointed out by a peer, these types of reviews are still very good to filter out bad proposals. I agree with this statement. At the same time, I also think that science is a strong link problem, and we should focus our efforts on finding the best ideas.↩︎
And, I assume, to other EU grants as well.↩︎
This creates a situation where a person with a family gets the same salary as a person without a family.↩︎
And possibly not even written when the applicants do not have enough privilege to spend three months on a single-person grant proposal.↩︎
But still not perfect.↩︎
Reuse
Citation
@online{nowosad2024,
author = {Nowosad, Jakub},
title = {Navigating the Maze: {Reflections} on Applying for the
{Marie} {Skłodowska-Curie} {Actions} {Postdoctoral} {Fellowship}},
date = {2024-07-22},
url = {https://jakubnowosad.com/posts/2024-07-22-msca-bp1/},
langid = {en}
}