Resubmitting your MSCA DN proposal in 2025 – practical tips for applicants
14th August 2025 at 11:41 am
Proposal writing time is currently well underway for the upcoming MSCA 2025 Doctoral Networks (DN) call on 25 November 2025. Given that only 149 out of 1,417 proposals were successful in 2024, as an applicant who scored highly but below the cut-off, you might consider resubmitting your proposals this year. In addition to the revised MSCA DN proposal template, we thought to share a few pointers that could help you get the extra point in your proposal:
Check your resubmission eligibility – As per the MSCA 2025 DN guidelines, proposals that received a score of less than 80% in the 2024 DN call are not eligible for resubmission of a similar proposal in the 2025 DN call. Ensure your previous score meets this threshold before investing time in a resubmission.
Leverage your Evaluation Summary Report (ESR) – Focus on the areas highlighted by the evaluators from your previously submitted proposal to help you implement targeted revisions and maximise your chances of success in the resubmission.
Revisit your consortium composition – Ensure you have a balanced and complementary consortium that supports the interdisciplinary and intersectoral nature of the MSCA DNs. Involve the participation of non-academic partners (e.g. SMEs, industry partners) and Associated Partners to ensure that each Doctoral Candidate (DC) can be offered a meaningful and impactful secondment.
Refine your Excellence section – Verify whether your innovative research idea can convincingly demonstrate the significant breakthrough and the need for qualified scientists in your proposed research area.
Strengthen your Training programme – Ensure it is comprehensive and well-structured, clearly outlining a composition of scientific, transferable and complementary skills training. Show an example of at least one annual network event, some intermediary and unique training activities tailored to your network’s specific needs (e.g. workshops, summer schools, specialised training).
Maximise your Impact section – Clearly show the measurability of expected impacts in your DN, such as skills to be acquired by DCs. Strengthen your dissemination and communication plan to reach a diverse audience beyond the scientific community.
Refine your Implementation section – Ensure that the mandatory tables in Section 3 of the proposal are complete and their contents are accurate. Review your work plan to verify it is coherent and feasible, and brings together complementary expertise and infrastructure from partners.
Quantify experience – Confirm in the Part B2 document that the partners’ supervision and training experience is quantified (e.g. number of PhD students supervised, courses taught)
Expert help and support
At accelopment, we have guided numerous MSCA DN consortia through successful submissions over the years, helping new DN proposals or resubmissions of previously submitted DN proposals surpass the cut-off and secure funding. As an Associated Partner in three new Horizon Europe DNs, namely BioTransform, INT2ACT and PANIONS, seven ongoing DNs DarChem, MobiliTraIN, BREAKthrough, CONCISE, MITGEST, MIRELAI and SYNSENSO, as well as many completed H2020 ITNs, we at accelopment have gathered a great deal of practical experience in Proposal Writing, Project Management and Dissemination support as well as Transferable Skills Training geared toward DNs.
Although there is no guarantee that your proposal will get over the line in the resubmission, if you don’t try you cannot win! Please contact us if you are interested in our support for your DN proposal resubmission.
