ORCID
ORCID offers a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that you as an individual scholar own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher. ORCID is being implemented by publishers around the world. In some countries with centralized funding structures, ORCID is in even greater use than it is in the United States. Ten million researchers have created their own ORCIDs.
Learn more about ORCID at https://orcid.org/.
ACLS is joining higher education organizations and funders in encouraging the use of ORCID, which will strengthen academic infrastructure and our relationships with constituencies throughout the academic world.
The benefits for scholars are numerous: having a persistent ID for applicants and fellows could be helpful to scholars whose scholarly record is attributed differently over time (due to differences between Roman and non-Roman characters or because a scholar’s name changes as a result of marriage, divorce, or transitions in gender identification). Faculty with adjunct or other contract employment also benefit from having a persistent and non-institutionally based identity, since institutions do not follow any standard record-keeping on their public websites.
In future years, we hope to integrate more of an applicant’s ORCID record data into the application process, saving them time and effort. For now, we believe that simply requiring ORCID registration is a great first step.
While it only takes a minute to sign up for an account, we advise applicants for ACLS fellowships and grants to register with ORCID before beginning their online applications.
No, not for the purposes of the current ACLS fellowship and grant competitions. You should control your ORCID privacy settings in the way that makes you most comfortable. You can review ORCID’s full privacy policy at https://info.orcid.org/privacy-policy/.
You are only required to register for the ID; how much information you add to your profile is entirely up to you. You can learn more about the benefits of having and using an ORCID profile at https://info.orcid.org/benefits-for-researchers/.
ELIGIBILITY
Yes, an applicant to this fellowship may also apply to as many fellowship programs as are suitable. However, not more than one ACLS or ACLS-joint award may normally be accepted in any one competition year.
No, eligibility for this program is not restricted based on citizenship or permanent residency. Any doctoral student who is pursuing a PhD in the humanities or social sciences at degree-granting institutions in the United States is eligible to apply.
Yes, but unsuccessful applicants may reapply to this program only once.
For the purposes of the 2022-23 competition year, the eligibility criteria are designed to support doctoral students who are at the earliest stages of dissertation project design, so that they can undertake exploratory, experimental, expansive research. (In other words, scholars who will be immediately pre-candidacy or who have very recently become doctoral candidates/ABD at the time of the award in 2023.) However, given the diversity of PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences, we understand that it might not be a straightforward process to apply these criteria to your own program. We suggest you draw on standard descriptions provided by your department/program, such as a graduate program handbook, to help calculate your progress.
For instance, if the standard time to degree in your program is six years, and you are just beginning the third year of your program in the fall of 2022, you would begin the fellowship no later than September 2023, the beginning of your fourth year. According to the standard time to degree in your program (six years), you would have three years remaining as of September 2023 to complete your degree. As long as you will have completed all necessary coursework for your program by September 2023, and you meet the other eligibility requirements, you would be eligible to apply.
If your program does not prescribe a set time to degree, or if this varies depending on the chosen track in your program, consider the following questions:
- Without an ACLS award, would your proposed path to the completed dissertation take less than two years of fulltime work dedicated to the PhD?
- Have you made significant progress on the dissertation already?
If the answer to either of these questions is yes, you would likely be ineligible for an award. The fellowship is meant to provide additional time and resources, beyond what is provided by your doctoral program to expand the scope of your dissertation project with exploratory, experimental research. The Dissertation Innovation Fellowship is not intended to replace a year of funding you would need to complete the PhD on the general timeline prescribed by your department.
Whether or not a standard timeline exists for your program, it is essential that you indicate your expected ABD date in the application, and your expected date of earning the PhD. This will help ACLS program staff determine your eligibility. ACLS also provides space within the application where you can describe any disruptions to your progress that would extend the timeline to degree. If you have any questions about your eligibility, please contact ACLS program staff at [email protected].
Possibly. The answer to this question depends on other factors in your progress to degree, such as a leave of absence from your program for family or medical leave, or a “resetting” of your timeline due to a formal move from one PhD program/department to another. Please fill in all requested fields in the education section of the application and use the space allotted to describe any special circumstances that have affected your progress to degree. As a reminder, in this initial competition year, ACLS is seeking to support scholars who are at the earliest stages of dissertation project design. The program is not designed to support graduate students whose dissertation research and/or writing is well underway or advanced.
Possibly. This award is designed to support scholars who are preparing to embark on exploratory research in support of a dissertation project – such as pre-ABD students and those who will reach candidacy shortly before taking up the fellowship – and not those whose projects that are well underway at the time of application. However, we understand that doctoral students may face disruptions or delays to starting dissertation projects. ACLS provides space within the application to describe such issues, and we request that applicants’ referees affirm these conditions in the text of their reference letters.
ONLINE FELLOWSHIP APPLICATION PROCESS
No, you may work on it in multiple sessions, though you will need to save your work after you finish each section of the application. Once you have submitted the application, you cannot work on it again.
No, your application will be judged as it is at the time of submission.
Notifications and other correspondence are sent via email from “acls.org” addresses. In order to prevent ACLS emails from being blocked, we suggest that applicants and letter writers:
- Add the relevant ACLS email addresses (e.g., [email protected], [email protected], and [email protected] for letter writers) to their address book or safe senders list.
- Check spam or junk mail folder for notifications and correspondence, if you are expecting them.
- In the event that you continue not to receive ACLS emails in either your inbox or spam/junk folder, it may be that your institution (“.edu”) or internet service provider (“.com” or “.net” email) is blocking these emails before they reach you. Please contact the appropriate personnel e.g., your IT department so that they may resolve the issue.