First edition of FCT-Tenure with 1,000 vacancies exclusively for permanent positions

FCT-Tenure is a new FCT funding instrument for stabilizing researchers in career positions. Designed to promote the hiring of PhD researchers exclusively for permanent positions, it will be biennial, with two editions already planned. The current edition of this program plans to open up to 1,000 positions, with an additional 400 positions expected to open in the 2025 edition. FCT-Tenure is a central instrument in the professional stabilization of researchers and their lines of research, as well as in the creation of a more attractive and sustainable career horizon for researchers in the early stages of their careers.

Institutions belonging to the National Science and Technology System (SNCT) are eligible to submit applications for co-financing of positions associated with new Calls career positions. It will then be up to the beneficiary institutions, through Calls and in accordance with the scientific and innovation strategy submitted for evaluation, to select and recruit PhD graduates.

The program will allow PhD graduates to pursue careers in both research and teaching, with a limit of four hours per week dedicated to teaching in each career while the support is in effect. In this way, both careers are viewed through the scientific research activities they have in common, while at the same time providing an important level of autonomy in the management of career positions within the framework of each institution's strategic planning.

FCT-Tenure will be implemented on a co-financing basis for a maximum period of 3 years for each position awarded in the teaching career, and up to a maximum of 6 years for each position awarded in the research career. Two-thirds of the salary costs will be co-financed in the first 3 years for both careers and one-third in the second three-year period (if the contract is within the research career or equivalent). Co-financing will apply to the salary costs of any category in which the researcher is hired, enabling each researcher to be hired in the category that best suits their profile and career path.

The design of this program shares the general guidelines that shape new programs already launched by FCT, namely the promotion of greater mobility and flexibility in research, understood as interinstitutional, intersectoral, and intercareer (research and teaching), but also interdisciplinary and collaborative. This values bottom-up approaches and dynamics which, by rejecting one-size-fits-all solutions, allow the scientific community and institutions to more readily adapt to and take advantage of the diversity and creativity of disciplinary contexts and knowledge production structures, which are increasingly diverse and collaborative.

With the aim of promoting financial and strategic synergies between the FCT-Tenure program and other institutions, intersectoral partnerships will be considered, in addition to the sharing of responsibilities and scientific objectives between different institutions and entities. In these cases, each position proposed for evaluation may be designated and subsequently advertised as a “Research Unit” Chair or “Non-Academic” Chair.

In addition to receiving funding from the State Budget, FCT-Tenure is financed by the PRR's Science Plus Training Measure, consolidating the PRR's vision as an instrument for structural transformation in the country.

Details of Call can be found on the FCT website.