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With the evaluation results of the last ITN submission deadline available it is either time to start on the grant preparations or, more likely, to asses the situation and take a resubmission into consideration. As usual, we’ve published a breakdown of the evaluation results. The competition was, as it has been in the past years, fierce and unforgiving. Many proposals with scores well into the 80s and 90s will not be receiving funding. At this point many high-scorers will be thinking of a resubmission for the ITN deadline 2019. Before you get started on your masterplan you might be thinking…

…is it worth considering a resubmission?

In previous years, a large share of the funded proposals were resubmissions. We don’t have an exact number but we’ve come to accept this as a fact by talking to many of our project partners and clients. Additionally, our services have been required for some resubmissions in the past years. Before deciding whether to resubmit your reworked proposals there are a few points to consider:

• Read the Evaluation Summary Report carefully; sometimes they contain useful tips that can help you improve your proposal.
• Revisit your consortium composition; do you have enough companies on board so that each ESR can be offered a private sector secondment?
• Ask someone to review your Science section to verify whether your innovative research idea and the need for qualified scientists in this area are explicit enough.
• Rethink your Training Programme and ensure that there is for example at least one annual network event, a final project event and some unique training activities included.
• Re-examine your Impact section for measurability of expected impacts, such as skills to be acquired by the ESRs
• Check whether the mandatory tables in the Implementation chapter are complete and/or whether additional or fewer details might be a way forward.
• Confirm in the Part B2 document that the partners’ supervision and training experience is quantified.

accelopment’s experience with resubmissions

In the past, we’ve helped a proposal go from a score of less than 80 to over 95 in the resubmission. However, we also know that the opposite is possible: A proposal with a score in the 90s was only awarded 84 in the second round of trying. Although there is no guarantee that your proposal will get over the line in the resubmission, if you don’t try you cannot win. With experience dating back to FP7, our enthusiasm for ITN projects hasn’t halted. Most recently, we helped the projects Train2Target and EuroNeurotrophin, both resubmissions, and ImmerSAFE and LightDyNAmics, both new submissions. In 2017, two thirds of the accelopment-supported ITN proposals received funding compared to the average success rate of 8%.