Career applications open for thousands of researchers

From this Monday, researchers must apply to the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) competition for 1,000 vacancies in teaching or research careers.

Recruitment, co-funded by FCT, will be undertaken through the new FCT Tenure program and the application deadline is 1 March 2024.

The program provides that FCT will co-fund for a maximum period of three years each dedicated teaching position in higher education, and for research careers the co-funding period is extended to six years.

During the first three years, the FCT will co-finance 67% of salary costs and guarantee 33% of research and development salaries in the second three-year period.

In both cases, the remainder of the funding will be provided by higher education institutions (universities and polytechnics) and scientific research.

Although FCT support is in place, researchers can only teach at universities for a maximum of four hours per week.

The second edition of the competition is planned for 2025, during which 400 PhD candidates in the same specialty are to be recruited.

Institutions that employ researchers in both professions with approved FCT co-funding will be required to open recruitment calls by 31 July 2025. Otherwise, they will be considered ineligible for the second edition of the program, scheduled to open in 2025.

The new program was criticized by rectors, who asked for more money so that universities could take on the financial burden of integrating researchers, and also by trade unions, with the National Federation of Teachers (Fenprof) believing that the available vacancies were not enough to avoid mass unemployment of researchers with unstable labor contracts, as well as continued lack of compliance with the law.

The Research Employment Promotion Act of 2017 stipulates that employment contracts have a maximum duration of six years, after which postdoctoral researchers have the opportunity to begin a research or teaching career.

In Portugal, scientific work is carried out primarily by researchers who receive fellowships and fixed-term contracts.

Entering a scientific career in a more consistent manner has been requested by researchers for several years.

Although researchers work in university research departments and also teach classes, institutions have for years resisted opening research career competitions, preferring instead to launch teaching career competitions, citing insufficient funding and faculty shortages.