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European Commission - FP7

 Time Limits

• See Access/Data Sharing section for ‘when to deposit, and where’.
• Continuous reporting (during and after the project): During and after the project, the PI shall provide references of all scientific publications relating to results, at the latest two months following publication.   Template documents for reporting available here.  
• Within 60 days of the end of the project, a ‘final report’ must be submitted, which must comprise a plan for the use and dissemination of research results  and a full list of publications relating to results of the project.  See Guidance notes on Project Reporting,
• Period for dissemination - In contrast to FP6, where project results should be disseminated within a period of two years after the end of the project, there is no such obligation in FP7. However, if participants fail to disseminate the foreground as swiftly as possible, the Commission may take charge of such obligation at any time, without requiring any authorisation from the participants concerned.
• All files and documents have to be kept for up to five years after the end of the project for auditing purposes.

 Data Management Plan

• Yes – this is a requirement.  Under FP7, at the proposal stage there should be a preliminary plan or 'elements that are foreseen by the partners for the management of foreground' (foreground = results generated by the project) (for instance for intellectual property rights according to the type of results that are expected and the potential application for legal protection that could be made).
• At the end of the project, there must be a 'plan for the use and dissemination of foreground' submitted to the Commission as part of the final report with detailed information on how the foreground is managed.  See FP7 rules for participation and other useful documents (NB.  external website)

 Access/Data Sharing

• You are required to use and disseminate the results generated by the project (the foreground).
• Any planned dissemination activity must be communicated to the consortium participants, must comply with some formal requirements and must be accurately reported in the plan for the use and the dissemination of foreground
• Either one of the documents described below should be deposited in an institutional or subject-based repository upon acceptance for publication:
  • Published version: publisher’s final version of the paper, including all modifications from the peer review process, copyediting and stylistic edits, and formatting changes (usually a PDF document),
  or
  
  • Final manuscript accepted for publication: final manuscript of a peer-reviewed paper accepted for journal publication, including all modifications from the peer review process, but not yet formatted by the publisher (also referred to as “post-print” version).

•  Open Access:  Grant recipients are also required to make their best efforts to ensure that this electronic copy becomes freely and electronically available to anyone through the institutional or subject-based repository, as soon as possible, but no later than
  • six months after publication (in the thematic areas "Health", "Energy", "Environment (including Climate Change)", and "Information & communication technologies" (“Cognitive Systems”, “Interaction” and “Robotics”) and the activity "Research infrastructures" (e-infrastructures),
  or
  • twelve months (in the thematic area "Socio-economic Sciences and the Humanities" and the activity "Science in Society").

•   The OpenAIRE repository offers researchers, who do not have access to an institutional or subject-based repository, a mechanism that allows them to comply with the OA pilot and ERC Guidelines’ requirements.

 See the EC pages “Guide to Successful Communications”.

  Policy & most useful information:

• Further links to FP7 Guidance documents 
• Guidance Notes on Project Reporting - June 2010 version (NB.  pdf - right click to save)
• European IPR Helpdesk
• Open Access Infrastructure in Europe

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