NSERC website will be unavailable for a few hours on Saturday, March 23. The tri-agency Financial Data Submission and Reconciliation System (FDSR) will also be unavailable during that time. We expect service to resume the same day.
All applications and application-related documents and forms submitted to NSERC, either through NSERC’s On-line System or on paper, require formal approval by applicants, academic institutions and other participants before they can be reviewed by NSERC. The meaning of signatures on applications and other documents is described in the instructions relevant to the program to which you are applying.
An electronic approval consists of identification codes, prompts and date stamps of specific events activated and used in combination that are recorded by NSERC’s On-line System. It has the same significance, weight and applicability as an original signature. Electronic approval is required for:
NSERC forms and documents that normally require authentication by means of an original signature are, when submitted through NSERC’s On-line System, electronically approved by the author and, when applicable, the authorized officials of post-secondary institutions or host organizations to whom they are submitted. The act of submitting these forms and documents using the On-line System replaces the original signature.
Paper applications sent to NSERC still require an original signature.
In addition to the definition of signatures on applications, NSERC has developed the following electronic approval guidelines to accommodate the on-line submission process. These guidelines are meant to help reduce the administrative workload on the applicant, improve the integrity of the process, and provide more flexibility to institutions’ internal process whereby electronic submissions require an electronic approval or electronic signature.