CVar Argentina: CV Registry & SIGEVA Sync

This page is about CVar, Argentina’s national researcher CV registry — the Registro Unificado y Normalizado a nivel nacional de los Datos Curriculares del personal científico y tecnológico, run under the national science portfolio (MINCyT) at cvar.sicytar.mincyt.gob.ar. It is not Conditional Value at Risk, the financial tail-risk measure that shares the same acronym, and it is not a CONICET system.

That last point is where most of the confusion lives. Argentine researchers routinely use the names CVar and SIGEVA interchangeably, because the two systems look almost identical on screen, ask for the same curricular data, and are connected by a transfer feature. They are nevertheless two separate databases, owned by two different institutions, and the data does not flow between them automatically. Understanding which record a given call actually reads — and what you have to do by hand before the closing date — is the entire practical content of this page.

The one-sentence version

CVar is the national registry that holds your curricular data for the whole country; SIGEVA is the transactional system a specific institution uses to run its calls and evaluations; and moving your CV from one to the other is a manual, per-form, password-protected share-then-import that you must initiate yourself. An up-to-date CVar record does not make the record inside a call up to date.

What CVar is, and who runs it

CVar is a national curricular registry for scientific and technological personnel working in Argentine institutions. Its stated purpose is to hold one unified, standardised, continuously updated record per researcher so that curricular data can be reused across institutions and calls instead of being re-typed into every application form, and so that the science portfolio has reliable aggregate statistics for planning.

The Agencia I+D+i states the registry’s mandate in its own call documentation, describing CVar as the register “que tiene el compromiso de integrar, almacenar, mantener actualizados y proteger los Datos Curriculares y Personales del Personal científico Tecnológico en la Base de Datos Unificada para todo el país” — the commitment to integrate, store, keep current and protect the curricular and personal data of scientific and technological personnel in the Base de Datos Unificada for the whole country (PICT 2021 call page, Agencia I+D+i).

Key facts, in the terms that matter administratively:

Operator — the national science portfolio (MINCyT). Argentina’s science administration has been restructured more than once in recent years and the portfolio’s rank has changed with it; the registry itself and its mincyt.gob.ar domain have persisted through those changes. See our guide to CONICET’s funding and researcher employment model for that administrative history.
Parent system — CVar is one subsystem of SICYTAR, the Argentine science and technology information system, which is why the registry lives at cvar.sicytar.mincyt.gob.ar rather than on a domain of its own.
Scope — national and cross-institutional. It is not tied to any single university, agency or council.
Support contact — [email protected], and telephone (54 11) 4899 5000 int. 2154, both published on the CVar sign-in page (verified live, August 2026).

CVar and SIGEVA: which record is authoritative

SIGEVA (Sistema Integral de Gestión y Evaluación) is CONICET’s management and evaluation platform, licensed to and deployed by many universities and agencies as their own branded instance — SIGEVA-CONICET, SIGEVA-UBA, SIGEVA-UNC, SIGEVA-UCA and so on. Our separate guide to SIGEVA covers what that platform does in its own right.

The important structural point is that there is no single SIGEVA. There are many independent SIGEVA installations, each with its own database, plus CVar sitting alongside them as the national registry. Your curricular data therefore exists as several separate copies, and they drift apart unless you actively reconcile them.

“Authoritative” consequently has two different answers depending on what you are asking:

For the national record of who you are and what you have done — CVar is authoritative. It is the unified national registry, and several national calls treat it as the required point of origin for curricular data.
For any specific call, evaluation or report — the authoritative record is the copy sitting inside the system running that process on its closing date. Evaluators read the destination database. They do not go and look at your CVar record. A perfect CVar profile and a stale SIGEVA-UBA profile means the evaluator reads the stale one.

This is the single most consequential thing to understand about the pair, and it is the direct cause of the most common failure mode: a researcher updates CVar diligently, assumes the update has propagated, and submits a call with two-year-old publications attached.

Comparison at a glance

Dimension	CVar	SIGEVA
What it is	National curricular registry	Management and evaluation platform
Owner	National science portfolio (MINCyT), within SICYTAR	Developed by CONICET; licensed to institutions
How many instances	One, national	Many — one per institution
Primary job	Hold and standardise your CV once, for the whole country	Run calls, submissions, reports and peer evaluation
What lives there that the other lacks	The unified national curricular record and its statistics function	Applications, project records, evaluation workflow, institutional endorsement
Who reads it	Policy and planning; calls that require it as origin	Evaluators, committees, institutional administrators
Updates from the other	Manual import	Manual import

How data actually moves between CVar and SIGEVA

CONICET publishes a synchronisation guide for exactly this (SIGEVA — Guía de Sincronización, currently at version 3; earlier versions remain posted on CONICET’s SIGEVA site). The mechanism it documents has two stages, and both are performed by the researcher:

Share, at the origin system. Sign in to the system that holds the good copy of your data. Switch to the role Usuario banco de datos de actividades de CyT — this is the step people miss, because the sharing feature is not visible under an application or evaluation role. Under the Principal tab, open Compartir Formularios. You are shown a list of the institutions that have the sharing module enabled, you select the destination(s), and you set a password of your own choosing.
Import, at the destination system. Sign in to the destination — the other SIGEVA instance, or CVar. Open each CV form you want to bring across and press Importar, supplying the same password you set when sharing.

Four properties of this mechanism drive nearly every practical problem researchers hit with it:

It is manual and user-initiated. Nothing syncs on a schedule. Nothing syncs because you saved a record. If you did not run both stages, the transfer did not happen.
It is per-form, not whole-CV. Import is performed form by form at the destination. Importing your publications does not import your teaching, your projects, or your supervision records. Partial synchronisation looks exactly like completed synchronisation unless you check each section.
It is directional, one run at a time. A share targets destinations from one origin. Keeping three systems aligned is not one action; it is a share plus an import into each destination.
Only you (or a designated Colaborador) can do it. The published procedure restricts these steps to the CV owner or a user explicitly designated as a collaborator on that CV. Your research office cannot quietly fix it for you unless you have granted that access first.

Verification note. The role, tab and button names above are taken from CONICET’s published synchronisation guide and the institutional instructivos that reproduce it. The current version-3 guide is distributed as an image-based PDF that we could not extract text from directly, so treat the exact wording as reported rather than quoted, and expect minor label variation between SIGEVA instances and versions — universities customise their deployments. If a label does not match, look for the banco de datos role first; the two-stage share-then-import structure has been stable across published versions.

What has to be updated before a call

This is where the distinction stops being academic. For Agencia I+D+i / FONCyT calls such as the PICT series, the call pages are explicit that CVar is the required point of origin and that the transfer into the call’s own database is the applicant’s responsibility. The PICT 2021 call page states:

Todos/as los/as integrantes del Grupo Responsable deben registrar y actualizar sus antecedentes curriculares en CVar y luego importar dicha información a la Base de Datos del FONCyT.

All members of the Grupo Responsable must register and update their curricular record in CVar and then import that information into the FONCyT database. The call page directs applicants to the Bases for the consequences of not doing so; admissibility conditions are set per call, so read the current call’s Bases rather than relying on a previous edition — including this page’s summary of one.

In the FONCyT database the import is reported to surface as an update control on the applicant’s personal-data tab (labelled along the lines of Actualizar mis datos desde CVar), rather than the Compartir Formularios flow used between SIGEVA instances. Confirm the control in the live system for your call; the underlying obligation — get it into CVar, then pull it into the call — is what stays constant.

Pre-submission checklist

Identify the destination system by name. Not “SIGEVA” — which SIGEVA, or the FONCyT database, or CONEAU Global. Everything below depends on this.
Update CVar first, not the destination. If you edit the destination copy directly, a later import can put you in conflict with your own national record, and you will have to reconcile them anyway.
Update every affected section, not only publications: projects, funding, supervision and teaching, prizes, technology transfer, conference contributions.
Run the share stage from CVar (or your best-populated system), selecting the destination institution and setting a password you record somewhere.
Run the import stage at the destination, form by form, and open each imported form afterwards to confirm the records are actually there.
Verify against the printed/preview CV the destination generates, not against your memory of what you entered. The generated document is what an evaluator sees.
Leave working days, not hours. Both systems load heavily near call deadlines, and a failed import at 23:00 on the closing date is not a recoverable position.
Every co-applicant repeats all of the above. Where a call requires all Grupo Responsable members to be registered, one unregistered collaborator is a problem for the whole application.

Registering on CVar

Registration is self-service at cvar.sicytar.mincyt.gob.ar. The sign-in page carries a link for new users (“Si es un usuario nuevo presione aquí”) alongside a password-recovery link. In outline, the process is: create the user account, complete your personal and identity data, then populate the curricular forms section by section — or, if your data already exists in a SIGEVA instance, populate them by importing rather than by re-typing, using the share-then-import mechanism above with CVar as the destination.

Registering is worth doing before you need it. A CVar account created on the day a call closes is a CVar account with an empty CV in it, and the import stage cannot conjure records that were never entered anywhere.

Common problems and what causes them

“I updated my CV but the call shows old data.” Almost always the import stage was never run at the destination, or was run for only some forms. Check form by form.
“I can’t find Compartir Formularios.” You are in the wrong role. Switch to Usuario banco de datos de actividades de CyT; the option lives under the Principal tab.
“The destination institution isn’t in the list.” Only institutions that have the sharing module enabled appear. If yours does not, there is no self-service transfer to it and you should ask that institution’s SIGEVA administrators what they support.
“The import asks for a password I don’t have.” It is the password you set during the share stage — not your account password for either system. If you have lost it, share again with a new one.
Duplicated records after importing. Because import brings records into a database that may already hold entries you typed by hand, the same publication can end up recorded twice. Review imported sections for duplicates rather than assuming a clean merge.
Data entered in the wrong CV. Researchers who hold both a CONICET appointment and a university post have at least two SIGEVA identities plus CVar. Confirm which system you are signed into before a long data-entry session.

How CVar relates to ORCID and the wider identifier ecosystem

CVar is a national curricular registry, which is a different kind of object from a global persistent identifier. It is closest in kind to the other Latin American national CV platforms and to Europe’s national CV formats, not to ORCID.

ORCID is a researcher-controlled, funder-agnostic global identifier that travels with you between countries and employers. It does not replace CVar for Argentine calls, and CVar does not replace it for international publishing and funder workflows. See how to register, find and search for ORCID iDs and our ORCID iD entry.
A CRIS — a current research information system — is the general category SIGEVA belongs to. CVar’s national, cross-institutional scope makes it closer to a national research information infrastructure than to an institutional CRIS; see CRIS interoperability for the standards angle on exactly the kind of transfer problem described above.
Regional siblings — Brazil’s Lattes Platform, Colombia’s CvLAC, Peru’s RENACYT and Mexico’s SNII occupy the same slot in their national systems. Portugal’s CIÊNCIAVITAE and Spain’s CVN are the closest European analogues, and India’s VIDWAN is the same pattern outside the region.
Because these registries are separate copies of overlapping data, they raise the same identity problems a CRIS does — see author name disambiguation and, for how a national CV is structured generally, the scientific curriculum vitae.

Why this matters for research administrators

For a research office supporting Argentine applicants or Argentine collaborators on an international consortium, three things follow:

“Their CV is up to date” is not a checkable claim without naming a system. Ask which database, and ask when the import was last run.
The transfer is a researcher action you cannot perform for them unless you have been designated a Colaborador. Build that designation into your support process early rather than discovering the restriction two days before a deadline.
Registration status of every co-applicant is a submission risk, not a formality, in calls that require all Grupo Responsable members to hold a CVar record.
CVar’s data is what feeds Argentina’s teaching-research categorisation, not just funding-call dossiers. See Programa de Incentivos / PRINUAR: categorisation of Argentine teacher-researchers for the categories (I-V), the evaluation cycle, and the pay-supplement mechanics that draw on this record.

For the broader assessment-reform context in which these national registries sit, see FOLEC-CLACSO, and our CRIS and identifiers pillar for the wider standards landscape.

Frequently asked questions

What does CVar stand for?

Registro Unificado y Normalizado a nivel nacional de los Datos Curriculares del personal científico y tecnológico — the unified, nationally standardised registry of curricular data for scientific and technological personnel. The short name is written CVar; it is unrelated to Conditional Value at Risk in finance.

Is CVar the same as SIGEVA?

No. CVar is the national curricular registry operated under the science portfolio within SICYTAR. SIGEVA is CONICET’s management and evaluation platform, deployed as many separate institutional instances. They hold overlapping data in separate databases and are connected by a manual transfer feature.

Does updating CVar automatically update SIGEVA?

No. The transfer is a two-stage, user-initiated process — share the forms from the origin system with a password you set, then import them form by form at the destination using that same password. Until you complete both stages, the two records stay different.

Which record do evaluators actually read?

The copy inside the system running the call, as it stands at the closing date. Evaluators do not consult your CVar record independently, so a current CVar profile does not compensate for a stale application record.

Do I need a CVar record to apply for a PICT?

The Agencia I+D+i PICT call pages state that all members of the Grupo Responsable must register and update their curricular record in CVar and then import it into the FONCyT database. Requirements and admissibility conditions are set per call, so check the current call’s Bases.

Can someone else update my CVar record for me?

Only if you designate them. The published procedure restricts the share and import steps to the CV owner or a user explicitly designated as a Colaborador on that CV.

Does CVar replace ORCID?

No, and neither replaces the other. CVar is a national registry required by certain Argentine processes; ORCID is a global, researcher-controlled identifier used by publishers and funders internationally. Argentine researchers publishing abroad generally need both.

Is CVar free?

Yes. It is publicly operated national infrastructure with self-service registration; there is no charge to create or maintain a record.

Sources

CVar sign-in portal — cvar.sicytar.mincyt.gob.ar (registration and support contact details verified live, August 2026).
Agencia I+D+i — PICT 2021 call page — the CVar registration and import requirement, and the registry’s official name and mandate, quoted above.
CONICET — SIGEVA Guía de Sincronización — the published share-then-import procedure (version 3 is the current edition; see the verification note above regarding text extraction).
CONICET — Instructivo de Sincronización (universidades, SIGEVA–CVar).