Institutional Scientific Employment

FCT-Tenure Program

Program of the Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. to support the hiring of PhD researchers exclusively for permanent positions.

The "FCT-Tenure" program is a new FCT funding instrument designed to promote the hiring of PhDs exclusively for permanent positions. It is intended that the FCT-Tenure programme will be published every two years, making it a central instrument both in the professional stabilization of researchers and their lines of research, and in the creation of a more attractive and sustainable career horizon for researchers in the early stages of their careers.

Institutions in the National Science and Technology System (SNCT) can apply, allowing them to submit applications for support to open international Calls for career positions. It will then be up to the beneficiary institutions to select and recruit the PhDs to be hired through international Calls , in accordance with the scientific and innovation strategy submitted for evaluation.

The program is being implemented on a co-financing basis and will allow doctoral graduates to join both research and teaching careers, with a limit of 4 hours per week of teaching in each career for as long as the support is in place. In this way, both careers are seen for the scientific research activities they have in common and, at the same time, an important level of autonomy is provided in the management of career positions within the framework of each institution's strategic planning.

The duration of this co-funding will be up to a maximum of 3 years for each position allocated in the teaching career and up to a maximum of 6 years for each position allocated in the research career, corresponding to two thirds of the salary costs of each position in the first 3 years for both careers, and one third in the second three years in the case of hiring in the research career or equivalent.

The co-financing will apply to the salary costs of any category in which the researcher is hired, making it possible to hire each researcher in the category that best suits their profile and career (researcher/assistant or assistant professor, to researcher/coordinating professor).

Expenditure on doctoral graduates who already hold indefinite legal employment relationships in the careers of Scientific Research, University Lecturer and Polytechnic Higher Education Lecturer, and without a fixed term in national institutions not covered by the Career Statutes, will not be eligible for this support. In addition, only doctoral graduates who have held a fixed-term contract or Studentship as a doctoral student at an institution in the National Science and Technology System will be eligible for this support.

In order to promote financial and strategic synergies of the FCT-Tenure program with other institutions, applicants may indicate solutions for additional co-funding and/or a sharing of responsibilities and scientific objectives with third parties. In these cases, each position proposed for evaluation may be flagged and subsequently publicized as "Research Unit / Associate Laboratory (UI/LA)" or "Non-Academic (NA)" Chairs.

The design of this program shares the general guidelines that shape new programs already launched by the FCT, namely the promotion of more mobility and flexibility in research, understood as inter-institutional, intersectoral and inter-career (research and teaching), but also interdisciplinary and collaborative. In this way, bottom-up logics and dynamics are valued which, by rejecting one-size-fits-all solutions, allow the scientific community and institutions more agile conditions for adapting to and taking advantage of the diversity and creativity of increasingly diverse and collaborative disciplinary contexts and knowledge production structures.

The first edition of this program provides for the opening of up to 1,000 positions, with an additional 400 positions expected to be opened in the 2025 edition.

The contracts supported in the first edition will be financed by tax revenue from the FCT budget and by investment RE-C06-i06 - "Science Plus Capacity Building" from the PRR. More information on the sources of funding can be found in the Call'sNotice of the Call Call.

Details of the 2023 Call can be found on the Call page.

PRR financing bar

Call Encourage Institutional Scientific Employment (previous editions)

CEEC Institutional Status Report 2nd Edition

Information updated on November 13, 2023

60 institutions have positions for the opening of the Call;
60 program contracts signed;
305 contracts to be awarded - 128 career positions and 177 fixed-term or uncertain-term positions;
288 employment contracts submitted.

See the list of contracts offered by the institutions.