2024 GOVERNMENT OF IRELAND POSTDOCTORAL

FELLOWSHIP SCHEME

APPLICANT’S GUIDE TO THE ONLINE SYSTEM

Key dates
Call open 31 August 2023
FAQ deadline 16:00 (Irish time) 05 October 2023
Applicant deadline 16:00 (Irish time) 12 October 2023
Mentor deadline 16:00 (Irish time) 19 October 2023
Research office endorsement deadline 16:00 (Irish time) 26 October 2023
Call outcome April 2024
Award start date 1 September 2024

Due to heavy server traffic on the day of the applicant and Mentor in Ireland deadlines, all participants are
strongly advised to submit their forms well in advance of the relevant deadline.
Applications cannot be submitted once the deadline has passed. Mentor in Ireland forms cannot be
submitted once the deadline has passed.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

1.USING THE ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM .............................................................................. 2

2. REGISTERING AS AN APPLICANT FOR THE FIRST TIME ............................................................. 2
3. CREATING AN APPLICATION .................................................................................................. 3
4. EDITING AN APPLICATION ..................................................................................................... 5
5. ADDING MENTOR(S) TO AN APPLICATION .............................................................................. 6
6. COMPLETING THE APPLICATION ............................................................................................ 7
7. CHECKING THE STATUS OF THE MENTOR FORM ..................................................................... 9
8. ENDORSEMENT OF APPLICATIONS ....................................................................................... 10

1. USING THE ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM

The grants management system is only compatible with the two most recent versions of Firefox,
Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari.

• If you have a technical issue regarding use of the online system, please read these
guidelines and the FAQ document available on our website. If your issue is not addressed
through either of these mechanisms, only then should you email [email protected]
with an outline of your technical issue.
• For any technical query, please include:
 your project ID
 the browser you are using
 and, if appropriate, a screenshot of any error messages.
• Applicants should not log into their profile or application form in different browsers at
the same time. This may cause the system to invalidate your login session and any
information you have entered will be lost.
• If you enter information and do not click the ‘save draft’ button before navigating away
from the page, the information will be lost.
• No alterations can be made to an application once it has been submitted. It is therefore
important that you check and re-check the application form until you are fully satisfied
with all sections before submitting.

2. REGISTERING AS AN APPLICANT FOR THE FIRST TIME

• In order to register as an applicant on the online system for the first time, click here and
complete the applicant registration form as prompted.
• Once you have filled in the required details, click ‘submit’ at the bottom of the registration
page. A confirmation email will automatically be sent to the email address you have
provided. This email confirms that you have successfully registered for the online system
and will issue you with a username and password.

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• If you do not receive this email, please check your spam folder and ensure that the
[email protected] email address is on your ‘safe senders’ list. If you are using an
institutional or work email account, you may need to check with your IT department to
ensure there is no issue with your organisation’s internal firewall.
• Once you have received your username and password, you should access the online
system here using the login details provided.
• If you have lost or forgotten your password, navigate to this link and click ‘forgot
password?’ A system-generated password will be forwarded to your email address. If you
do not receive this email, please check your spam folder. Please note that it may take up
to 15 minutes to receive the email containing your new password.

3. CREATING AN APPLICATION

• When you log into the online system, you will be presented with the ‘home’ screen below
where you can create and edit your application prior to the applicant deadline.

• Begin creating your application by clicking on the ‘open calls’ icon.

• Click on the ‘Begin Eligibility Quiz’ button to access a short quiz which will determine
whether or not you are eligible to apply to the programme.

• After beginning the quiz, you may click on ‘save draft’, which will allow you to save your
quiz and re-access it at a later time. To do so, after clicking on the ‘open calls’ icon, simply
click on ‘Continue Eligibility Quiz’.

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• Once you have completed the quiz, click on ‘submit’. No alterations can be made to an
eligibility quiz once it has been submitted. It is therefore important to check and re-check
the eligibility quiz form until you are fully satisfied with all sections before submitting.

• Potential applicants who are not eligible to apply to the programme will receive the
following message and will not be able to access an application form:

• Potential applicants who are eligible to apply to the programme will receive the following
message and should click the ‘Continue to Application’ button at the bottom of the page:

• Once you receive the eligibility message, you must immediately click on ‘Continue to
Application’. DO NOT navigate out of the page or reload the page before clicking on
‘Continue to Application’, or before the application form is open. Doing so will prevent
you from starting your draft application and from re-submitting the Eligibility Quiz. The
Irish Research Council will not reset an Eligibility Quiz.
• Once the application form is open, it will auto-save after 2 to 3 seconds, after which it will
become available under the ‘draft applications’ icon in the homepage:

• Begin by selecting the appropriate fellowship for which you are applying and entering
your project title.
• Your proposed higher education institution should be selected using the ‘Irish research
body’ field. Use the predictive text field or click the ‘lookup’ button and select the
appropriate check box next to your proposed higher education institution and it will be
associated with your application.
• If you have selected ‘yes’ to your application being in Irish, you now have the option to
‘upload’ your own English translation in PDF format.

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• The ‘applicant details’ section is largely populated based on your personal profile. If you
would like to update any of this information, click ‘save draft’ and navigate back to the
home screen where you can find the ‘manage your profile’ icon.
• ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes you from every other
researcher and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and
grant submission, supports automated linkages between you and your professional
activities ensuring that your work is recognised. If you do not currently have an ORCID,
please register for one at www.orcid.org.
• Please only add a participant (Mentor in Ireland) to your application form under the
‘primary and additional participants’ tab. Please see section 5 (“Adding a mentor to an
application”) below for further instructions.

4. EDITING AN APPLICATION

• You can access and edit your application as often as you like prior to the applicant
deadline so long as the application has not been submitted and remains in draft status.
To access your application, from the home screen click on the ‘draft applications’ icon,
and then on ‘edit’:

• Please ensure that you click the ‘save draft’ button at the bottom of each page before
moving from one tab to the next. If you input information on a tab and switch to another
without clicking ‘save draft’, this information will be lost. Do not use the browser ‘back’
button at any stage as you may lose essential information.
• You must be in ‘edit’ mode to input information to your application form. You can switch
between the ‘view’ and ‘edit’ modes at the top left of the browser window:

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• As each applicant can only submit one application, the message below will now appear if
you click on the ‘open calls’ icon on your home page:

5. ADDING A MENTOR TO AN APPLICATION

• It is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that their Mentor completes their reference
form through the online system by the relevant deadline (see 2024 Call Document). Any
application which does not have the required participant form (Mentor in Ireland)
completed in full and submitted via the online system by the relevant deadline will be
deemed ineligible. The form will not be accepted by email, in hardcopy or by any other
means. The Irish Research Council is not responsible for ensuring that participant form is
submitted on time through the online system. Due to heavy server traffic on the day of
the applicant and mentor deadlines, all participants are strongly advised to submit their
forms well in advance of the relevant deadline.
• You must associate a pre-registered Mentor in Ireland with your application through the
participants section at the bottom of the ‘primary and additional participants’ tab.
• The Mentor in Ireland details must be the same as those input at the ‘Eligibility Quiz’
stage. Applications with a discrepancy in the name of the mentor as detailed in the
‘Eligibility Quiz’ will be deemed ineligible.
• To add the Mentor in Ireland, scroll to the ‘participants’ section at the left of the ‘primary
and additional participants’ page, and click on ‘participants’.

• It is important that you ensure that ‘Mentor in Ireland’ is displayed in the drop-down field
to the right of the ‘lookup’ button when adding a mentor to your application. Please do
not add any other roles (e.g. supervisor, academic mentor) to your application.

• Use the predictive text field or click the ‘lookup’ button to find and ‘add’ your chosen
Mentor in Ireland to your application, by clicking on the ‘+’ button to the right of the drop-
down field. Go back to the ‘main’ section of the application and click ‘save draft’: your
mentor will be associated with your application.

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• If you cannot find your chosen Mentor in Ireland, please contact them to ensure they
have been registered through the research office in their higher education institution.
• Your mentor is now an associated participant on your application and will receive an
automatically generated email notifying them that they have been added as a participant
to your application. This email will contain login details for the online system where they
will be able to complete their mentor reference form.
• Applicants are advised to check with their mentors that they have received this email.
If they do not receive the email, they should check their spam folder and ensure that
the [email protected] email address is on their ‘safe senders’ list. If they are using an
institutional or work email account, they may need to check with their IT department
to ensure there is no issue with their organisation’s internal firewall.
• It is not possible to have a secondary mentor in a postdoctoral application although it is
possible to acknowledge them in the “Training and Career Development Plan” section for
training in relation to specific tasks and career development.
• If you have added the incorrect Mentor in Ireland to your application (ie. different to the
mentor’s name entered in the submitted eligibility quiz), this must be corrected while the
application is in draft status. Select the check box beside their name at the bottom of the
participants tab, click the ‘remove’ button and save your application. The Mentor in
Ireland will then be removed, and you can add the correct Mentor in Ireland as per the
instructions above. Please be reminded that the mentor associated with your application
must be the same as the mentor listed on your submitted eligibility quiz. If you remove a
Mentor in Ireland from your application, they will not be automatically notified. It is
the applicant’s responsibility to notify the Mentor in Ireland that they are no longer
assigned to an application.
• If the Mentor in Ireland in question has been registered with the incorrect email address,
then the research office should contact the Irish Research Council to amend the mentor’s
contact details on the online system.
• Please note that mentors cannot create or submit their reference form until after you
submit your application. Prior to submitting your application, your mentor can view your
application in draft status.
• Once the ‘Mentor in Ireland’ has been added to your application, their details will be listed
in the ‘participants’ section at the bottom of the ‘primary and additional participants’ tab.

6. COMPLETING THE APPLICATION

• As per the Call Document, in order to ensure a level playing field for all applicants the Irish
Research Council seeks to gender-blind the assessment process for these programmes. As
such, applications must be anonymous and free from pronouns or other words which
would identify the applicant’s identity and gender. In order to comply with these
guidelines, we ask that you do not use your name or give any clue as to your identity and
gender - e.g.: use ‘the applicant’ instead of your name if including any of your own
publications.

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• All degree results as entered in the application form and endorsed by the host institution
must be the applicant’s overall results and verifiable as such on official transcripts.
Regardless of whether they are relevant to the eligibility requirements for the programme,
conditional awardees will be required to submit official transcripts for each degree listed
in the application confirming the overall result, date of graduation and awarding
institution. If such transcripts cannot be presented, or do not verify the information
exactly as detailed in the application, any conditional offer of an award will be
withdrawn. If requested, supporting, non-returnable material must be forwarded to the
Irish Research Council for inspection before the award can commence. All transcripts must
be appropriately stamped and signed to confirm that they are official documents of the
institution.
• If your degree results refer to a grading system other than the Irish honours system (first
class honours, upper second class (2.1) honours etc.) or the 4.0 grade point average scale,
please enter them exactly as they appear on your transcripts but explain the grading
system being referred to in the free text box provided, including the link to any grade
converter website used.
• When completing the ‘proposed research’ tab, please consult the Irish Research Council’s
research categorisation document for further descriptions of primary area, discipline and
other research areas.
• When completing the ‘personal, ethical and sex/gender statements’ tab, please consult
the Irish Research Council’s sex/gender dimension statement for further information, in
the 2024 Call Document.
• When completing the ‘Publication and Other Research Outputs’ section, you should only
attach a PhD chapter if you have NO other relevant publications. Attaching a PhD chapter
when you have already listed other publications will result in your application being made
ineligible.
• Applications are expected to be entirely the applicant’s own work. Random sampling for
evidence of plagiarism and excessive duplication will be carried out during the application
and award process. Plagiarism is defined as the appropriation of another person’s ideas,
processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit. It will be deemed that
excessive duplication has arisen when significant portions of multiple applications to the
Irish Research Council are similar or identical in content. If such instances of plagiarism or
excessive duplication are identified by the Irish Research Council at any stage during the
application or award process, the relevant application(s) will be deemed ineligible,
award offers will be withdrawn, or active awards will be terminated with one month’s
notice. Such instances of plagiarism or excessive duplication will also be brought to the
attention of the host institution and the applicant in question will be prohibited from
applying for Irish Research Council funding in the future.
• No alterations can be made to an application once it has been submitted. It is therefore
important to check and re-check the application form until you are fully satisfied with
all sections before submitting. If successful, you will only be offered funding to carry out
the project as detailed in the application.
• In order to submit your application, click ‘submit application’ at the bottom of the form.

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• The following message will be displayed once your application has been submitted
successfully.

• Once an application has been submitted, the online system generates an automated
email to the mentor included on the application.
• Please note that the mentor can only complete their form after the application has been
submitted.

7. CHECKING THE STATUS OF MENTOR FORM

• It is the responsibility of the applicant to ensure that the mentor form is submitted by
the relevant deadline (see 2024 Call Document).
• The status of these forms can be checked at any stage by logging into the online system
and clicking on the ‘submitted applications’ icon on the ‘home’ screen. The information
contained in the ‘supervisor/mentor form status’ columns confirms the status of their
reference form.
• If the form is listed as ‘in preparation’ or ‘draft’, it has not been received by the Irish
Research Council. If the form is listed as ‘submitted’ or ‘completed’, it has been received
by the Irish Research Council.

• If necessary, you should contact your proposed mentor to ensure their forms will be
submitted before the deadline. The online application system will automatically
prevent submission of these forms after the deadline has passed.

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8. ENDORSEMENT OF APPLICATIONS

• The research office endorsement is the final step in the application process. All
applications must be endorsed on behalf of the proposed higher education institution
by the office of the vice-president/dean of research as applicable.
• You will be able to see the “Research Office Decision” by accessing the PDF of your
application by selecting “Submitted Applications” in your portal.

• Please note that the Research Officer decision will only be available in the PDF once the
decision is submitted by the HEI.

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