Disclaimer
The views expressed in this article are those of the author. Publication in Open Research Europe does not imply endorsement of the European Commission.
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) is one of the flagship EU programmes designed to foster researcher mobility and support career development across disciplines and countries. With the most recent call for proposals now closed, I recalled a conversation I once had with a colleague.
During that exchange, I mentioned an intriguing idea I had first encountered a few years earlier while reviewing a project proposal focused on a signaling pathway involved in fungal infection in plants. To my surprise, my colleague — an expert in fungal pathogenesis — was taken aback when she realized that I had served as a reviewer. From her perspective, the topic was clearly far outside my own field of expertise (plant genetics). Reflecting on the variability inherent in the expert review process, she half-jokingly remarked that this finally explained why her own proposal, submitted to the same programme some years earlier, had not been successful.
That conversation has echoed in my mind every time I have taken part in a review panel. It often makes me wonder whether the degree of overlap between a reviewer’s expertise and a proposal’s focus might inadvertently influence the outcome of an evaluation. This question naturally leads to a broader one: what does it actually mean to be appointed as an Expert?
When you first receive your assigned proposals for the MSCA program, the European Commission explicitly reminds you that you may feel your expertise does not perfectly match the topic. The immediate reaction is often to think, “This isn’t really my area,” and to consider declining. Yet reviewers are encouraged not to. Proposals rarely fit neatly into a single discipline, and it is precisely this multidisciplinarity that allows your perspective to provide valuable insights into aspects of the evaluation that might otherwise remain underexplored.
Understanding how the evaluation is structured also sheds light on the role of expertise. The MSCA process itself is organized in two main steps. First, each proposal undergoes an individual evaluation, typically carried out by three reviewers. Each reviewer produces an Individual Evaluation Report (IER) covering the three core evaluation criteria: excellence (weighted at 50%), impact (30%), and implementation (20%). Once the IERs are submitted, a consensus meeting is convened for each proposal. Here, reviewers discuss and reconcile their assessments, agreeing on a consolidated set of comments captured in the Consensus Report (CR). Finally, a score is assigned to each criterion on a scale from 0 (fail) to 5 (excellent), reflecting the consensus reached in the panel.
There is little doubt that when experts share a technical language and a common body of knowledge, both understanding and discussion become easier. Conversations flow more naturally, allowing for more elaborate reasoning and more precise solutions. By relying on a shared knowledge base and a similar way of interpreting problems, experts are often able to reach agreement quickly.
Yet this raises an important question: is agreement—or consensus—truly the ultimate goal of an evaluation? At first glance, the terminology suggests so: after all, the final step is formally called the Consensus Phase. Still, the answer is not as straightforward, at least for me when I reflect on my role as a reviewer. The Guide for Evaluators defines consensus as a collaborative process in which experts work together to develop a conclusion that best represents the collective opinion of the group. In this phase, evaluators are expected to be responsive, to engage openly in discussion, and to acknowledge—even if not adopt—opinions that differ from the majority view. Seen this way, consensus is not an end in itself but rather a means: a structured tool that enables decisions to be both informed and legitimate.
When the decision-making process is open, transparent, and grounded in dialogue, active listening, and mutual respect, it creates a solid foundation for considering everyone’s ideas and concerns. Reaching agreement through such a process gives the outcome greater weight and credibility. With each member bringing their own expertise to the table, what emerges is not simply an agreement, but one that each participant—through their own perspective and reasoning—can genuinely support and stand behind.
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