11 October 2017

ITN: How to deal with the fact the PhDs are not delivered within the timeframe of the projects?

As a general comment, the award of the PhDs should be confirmed in the letters of commitment. Concerning the fact the the PhDs will be awarded at a later point in time, there are different ways to deal with this in the application. Either it is not mentioned at all (evaluators are asked not to penalise consortia for not specifying this aspect), or, if possible, DO specify where the additional money for the fourth year will come from (it will be evaluated positively). Another option is to state in the proposal that a report about the PhD progress will be issued as deliverable. The deliverable itself should not be stated as 'PhD finished' or similar. A report about the progress state of the theses leaves more flexibility to describe where the ESRs stand with their PhDs.