ABIC

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ABIC
Formation	2003
Type	Non-profit organization
Headquarters	Lisbon, Portugal
Membership	420 members (Jan 2007)
Official languages	Portuguese
Chairman	André Levy (Post-doc fellow)
Budget	10k €
Website	http://www.abic-online.org

ABIC - Associação dos Bolseiros de Investigação Científica is the Portuguese Association of Grant-holders Researchers. ABIC was established in 2003 and represents early stage researchers as doctorate students, and post-doc fellows as well researchers who are not included is this two groups but are grant-holders. This association surged from a group of grant-holders researchers who gathered in 2001 to write a document [1] to be present to all the stakeholders involved with research in Portugal. This group called “plataforma de bolseiros de investigação científica (PBIC)” evolved in ABIC. ABIC main actions have been in the following areas: i) to alert the funding agencies in Portugal such as FCT (www.fct.mctes.pt) that the grant-holders researchers should have social benefits and pension schemes as recommended at The European Charter for Researchers [2]; ii) to urge the governments to open the positions available at the public sector and not use grant-holders researchers as cheap labour in Portugal; iii) to persuade the governments to deliver policies which are able to create scientific jobs, both at public and private sector.

ABIC is member of Eurodoc, the European federation of national organisations of young researcher. ABIC is member as well of World Federation of Scientific Workers (website)

The most active ABIC on-line resource is the bulletin board (forum.bolseiros.org) written in Portuguese but,in general, young Portuguese read and write English fluently.