R&D Projects

How to complete applications in the Project Calls portal

Logging onto the Project Calls portal

In order to access the FCT projects website and submit proposals to the various calls for R&D projects, you must be registered in the Sistema de Informação e Gestão da FCT — FCTSIG. You may find yourself in one of the following situations:

You have previously registered and your user name and password are still valid.

Simply enter them on

https://concursos.fct.mctes.pt/projectos

You have previously registered, but you have lost your user name and password or they do not work, and you have the same e-mail address.

You can recover them on

https://www.fct.mctes.pt/fctsig/?do=esqueceu

Your user name and password will be sent to you by e-mail. Enter these on

https://concursos.fct.mctes.pt/projectos

You have previously registered, but you have lost your user name and password or they do not work, and the e-mail address you used at that time is no longer active.

Contact credenciais@fct.mctes.pt. You will have to answer some questions to prove your identity.

Your user name and password will be sent to you by e-mail. Enter these on

https://concursos.fct.mctes.pt/projectos

You have never registered in the FCTSIG.

Register on

https://www.fct.mctes.pt/fctsig/?do=registo

A user name and password will be sent to you by e-mail. Enter these on

https://concursos.fct.mctes.pt/projectos

Curriculum vitæ

Principal investigator

As part of the process of submitting a proposal to a call for projects, you must provide the FCT with a current version of your CV in English. This is not done on the projects web page, but rather on a separate CV page integrated into FCTSIG. The CV page is available at

https://www.fct.mctes.pt/fctsig/cv

The user name and password will be the same as those for the projects web page.

Other investigators

Participants in a project other than the Principal Investigator do not need to access the projects web page. However they must:

  • Register in FCTSIG as described above for the Principal Investigator.
  • Provide the Principal Investigator with the association key that they receive from FCTSIG when they register or request a new user name and password. Note that any request for a new user name and password can invalidate the association key.

After successfully logging in on the projects web page

Lists of proposals and calls

After successfully logging onto the projects web page, the List of proposals page will open, where you can either do further work on one of proposals listed or start working on a new proposal. From this point forward we will assume that you wish to do the latter, and we will show the various steps in the order that is usually followed. To begin, click on the link that says If you wish to create a new proposal, select Registration of New Proposals.

This allows you to access a list of all the calls for projects available on this website that are currently open. Select the one to which you wish to submit a proposal.

This will open a form, where you should enter the title of your project (in both Portuguese and English) along with the scientific field and sub-field if applicable.

The data entered may be modified at a later date by the PI during the period during which the call is open and before the proposal is sealed. Note that a reference code is assigned to your proposal.

Once you have finished setting up a proposal with a title and scientific area, the page with the list of proposals will appear again with a line added for the new proposal. The list allows you to view al the project proposals in which you are the Principal Investigator, along with an indication of the status of each.

To begin working on the new proposal, click on the respective reference code.

Project summary

This page gives an overview of the proposal with all of its elements. Here you can also delete a project from your work area. Any data from a project that is deleted will remain in our data base until the end of the call so that if it is accidently deleted, it can be recovered by contacting webmaster@fct.mctes.pt.

This page provides a link to validate and seal the proposal, which allows you to access the application form validation page, and when the proposal has been satisfactorily validated and the PI considers the proposal complete, you can submit the proposal.

Application form

The application form is available at least for the period of time that the call to which the project being submitted is open.

The application form must be completed entirely in English, except for those fields that are specifically designated to be filled out in Portuguese.

The form is divided into 9 sections:

  1. Identification of the project

    Information including the project title and scientific area (principal and secondary), key words and project start date and duration is entered in this section. The funding amount requested is calculated automatically once the budget sections have been filled out.

  2. Participating institutions

    Institutions are divided into:

    • Principal Contractor
    • Participating Institutions
    • Principal Research Unit
    • Additional Research Unit
    • Host Institution

    The participating organisations are entered one-by-one in the respective field. If the desired organization does not appear on the menu, you will have to fill out the form available for this purpose. Simply follow the instructions. According to FCT criteria, the designation Research Unit applies only to those institutions that are recipients of multi-year funding.

  3. Scientific Component

    The scientific component of the proposal is organized as follows:

    1. Summary (in Portuguese and English)
    2. Technical Description
      1. Literature Review
      2. Research Plan and Methods
      3. Tasks
      4. Project Timeline and Management
    3. Bibliographic References
    4. Previous Publications
  4. Research Team

    The research team section is divided into 2 parts:

    List of team members

    In this list each investigator must provide his/her association key in order to be added as a member of the team. Once this operation has been done, a percentage of participation in the project is chosen for each member. The investigator’s curriculum vitæ must be updated in https://www.fct.mctes.pt/fctsig/cv, if this has not already been done.

    List of other members to be contracted during the course of the project

    These members are automatically added to the team in the field provided for justification of human resources. The number of individuals and the type of employment contract should be entered.

  5. Other projects
    • Funded projects

      Funded projects having the same PI can be added in two ways depending on whether they are being funded by the FCT or by another entity.

      If the funding is through the FCT, you must enter the project’s reference code, which will automatically import the data relative to that project, some of which can be corrected or added.

      For projects being funded by other institutions, you will need to fill out the reference code and then enter all the elements relating to the project.

    • Other applications

      It is mandatory to indicate any other similar project application which, if granted together with the current one, would cause an irregular situation. The interface to do this is similar to tghe one used for funded projects.

  6. Expected indicators
  7. Budget

    A budget section must be filled out for each of the participating organizations. The total of all the amounts entered will correspond to the funding being requested. In addition and when applicable, the section entitled Funding Scheme should be filled out.

    Budget items may include (depending on the specifications outlined in the call announcement):

    1. Human Resources

      The proposed human resources entered for this item will automatically appear in the Research Team section.

    2. Missions

      The total for this item must correspond to the total shown in the Overall Budget field of the Budget section.

    3. Consultants

      The total for this item should correspond to the total shown in the Overall Budget field of the Budget section.

      Given the importance of consultants to the evaluation of the execution of the project and the team, the names and institutions entered should be given clearly to make it easy for the evaluation panel to identify them. A brief, up-to-date, easy to locate CV should be made available on the Internet.

    4. Acquisition of goods and services

      The total entered for this item should correspond to the total shown in the Overall Budget field of the Budget section.

    5. Registration of patents

      The total entered for this item should correspond to the total shown in the Overall Budget field of the Budget section.

    6. Modifications to buildings and facilities

      Any modifications to buildings and facilities that are indispensable for carrying out the project, in particular for environmental or safety reasons should be entered in this field.

    7. Equipment

      The total entered for this item should correspond to the total shown in the Overall Budget field of the Budget section.

    8. Overheads
  8. Justification of the budget

    The budget justification should be entered for each item. The total for each of the items must be equal to that shown in the Overall Budget field. There is no automatic transfer of amounts between the two fields.

  9. Attachments

    This section is for inserting documents containing information that does not fit into the text fields: formulas, schemes, diagrams, tables or figures. Documents other than those listed will not be considered. The maximum amount of space available for each proposal is 10Mb. To ensure compatibility, only the following formats are allowed:

    • GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)
    • JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
    • PDF (Portable Document Format)
    • PNG (Portable Network Grpahics)

Further documentation to be submitted

A number of documents and additional information must be submitted to the FCT within 10 working days after the closing of the call for proposals. These include:

Declaration of Commitment

The Declaration of Commitment will be available for printing after the proposal has been sealed. After printing, the form should be duly signed and authenticated and a facsimile in PDF format should be uploaded. If the proposal is accepted, the original may need to be sent to the FCT by registered mail with recorded delivery.

This point is taken care of by the application portal after the Declaration of Commitment is submitted.

Aditionally the main contractor and participating institutions must supply FCT with:

Proof that there are no outstanding debts to the Social Security or Tax Authorities.

Principal Contractors and Participating Institutions must present their credentials to the FCT for verification of this information on official websites.

Additional data needed for proposals co-funded by FEDER

Any further data relative to the Proposing and Participating Organizations which may be required for a FEDER co-funded proposal to be accepted must be submitted.

Other documentation

This has been a brief outline of the proposal submission process. If you would like qualitative assistance in preparing a good proposal stand out for the purposes of evaluation, we suggest that you consult the Application Guide. Further information is also available once you have accessed the calls for proposals webpage and begin to fill out the application. Several points in particular are marked with an information icon info. A click on the icon will open a hyperlink that gives you specific details about that point.