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This year’s MSCA Doctoral Networks call has attracted considerable interest from the research community, with 1,066 proposals submitted.
The third call of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions-funded Doctoral Networks scheme closed on 28 November 2023. The European Research Executive Agency received 1,066 proposals.
By comparison, 946 proposals were submitted in 2022 and 158 were eventually selected for funding.
This year’s submitted proposals are distributed as follows
- Standard Doctoral Networks: 920 proposals
- Industrial Doctorates: 64 proposals
- Joint Doctorates:82 proposals
Through this call, the European Union (EU) is expected to fund over 150 projects, with an indicative budget of €434.8 million.
The European Research Executive Agency (REA) received proposals from coordinators based in 31 countries, including
- Spain: 148
- Germany: 136
- Italy: 121
- France: 107
- The Netherlands: 106
- Belgium: 89
- Denmark: 54
- Ireland: 38
- Norway: 34
- United Kingdom: 32
- Portugal: 31
- Austria: 29
- Sweden: 27
- Greece: 25
- Finland: 23
- Poland: 11
- Slovenia: 9
- Cyprus: 8
- Czechia: 7
- Estonia: 5
- Lithuania: 4
- Hungary, Israel, Luxembourg and Malta: 3 each
- Romania, Serbia, Slovakia and Türkiye: 2 each
- Bulgaria and Latvia: 1
Funding for excellent doctoral programmes
Through this call, the EU will fund doctoral programmes with the prospect of
- training highly skilled doctoral candidates in and outside academia
- stimulating their creativity
- enhancing their innovation capacities
- boosting their employability in the long-term
These doctoral programmes are implemented by international partnerships formed by organisations (from universities and research centres to the private sector and small and medium-sized enterprises) in the EU and countries associated to Horizon Europe and beyond.
Industrial Doctoral programmes will train PhD candidates to develop their skills in organisations outside academia, including in industry, businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises. They will benefit from joint industry-academia supervision.
Joint Doctoral programmes will set up highly integrated doctoral programmes promoting joint selection, training and supervision, leading to joint or multiple doctoral degrees.
Indicative timeline
- December 2023 to end of April 2024: evaluation by the European Research Executive Agency (REA) and external independent expert evaluators
- end of April 2024: notification of call results to applicants
- applicants will be able to access the results of the evaluation on their personal space of the Funding and Tenders Opportunities Portal
- an overview of the evaluation results, cut-off scores and statistics will be published on the page of the call Doctoral Networks 2023
- end of July 2024: expected signature of the grant agreement with the European Commission for successful projects
- September 2024: first EU-funded projects start.