Postdoctoral Scholars

NIH-NSF GSS Reporting

In most cases, postdocs in your department will fall into one of job codes: 9180 (vast majority), 9194, and 9195.

A person must:

hold a doctorate or foreign equivalent. Either professional doctorates (MD, PharmD) or research doctorates qualify (PhD, ScD). (Departments are responsible for ensuring foreign equivalency is met.)
be employed any time, even one day, during Semester I (8/9/2021-12/21/2021).
at 0.50 FTE research effort or greater. Any clinical duties would need to be less than 0.50 FTE. Clinical postdocs (9194) who are primarily doing research in the fall semester would be counted. Any teaching responsibilities would need to be less than 0.50 FTE for the Fall. Any postdoc who has less than 1.00 FTE research time should fill out a Faculty Activity Report.
Have been employed in a research position for no more than 7 years. The 7-year limit includes all positions that would qualify; therefore, a postdoc that was classified as a research postdoctoral scholar (9180) for 3 years and a research associate (9166) for 5 years, would need to be classified as a non-faculty researcher, not a postdoc.

Degree: Postdocs should have received their doctoral degree no more than 10 years prior. Any postdoc with a degree older than 2011 would need to fill out a justification for inclusion on the roster.
Job Codes other than 9180, 9194, and 9195: Some colleges promote their postdocs as a way to make them eligible to apply for investigator grants or offer them greater benefits. (Postdocs only allowed to be a PI on postdoc-specific grants, i.e K-99). Some of these job codes would be, but not limited to: 9166 (Research Associate), 9121 (Assistant in Research), or 9003 (Research Assistant Professor). As long as their university service does not exceed 7 years in a research position, they may be counted as a postdoc for reporting purposes. If someone was a 9180 postdoc for 2 years and a 9121 (Assistant in Research) for 4 years, they would be eligible to be counted. (Time as a graduate student does not count towards the 7-year limit). If this is the case, the department will need to justify the exception by selecting a justification from the drop-down menu in the roster. Note: Researchers in these line positions will not be counted as postdocs by default, the department must elect to do so and provide justification. If no justification can be provided, they will be counted as a non-faculty researcher.