Other key funder requirements

Completion of Timesheets

Both the European Commission and the Research Councils require timesheets to be completed by staff working on projects.

EC projects

Timesheet requirements for staff working on EC projects.

Research Council projects

For Research Council projects, Directly Incurred staff must use timesheets so that their actual time is recorded against a project. However where a person is contracted to work 100% of their time on a single project (whether they are working full time or part time), they have accepted that timesheets are not necessary as their costs can only be charged to that activity. In all other cases timesheets or project time records are required.

Research Councils: New timesheet requirements (from 31 December 2010)

Recent changes to TRAC FEC guidance set out a series of additional requirements regarding time recording on Research Council projects. These changes are set out below:

• Timesheets must be completed on a monthly basis (previous guidance was quarterly)
• Timesheets to be signed by the employee and approved by their manager
• Timesheet must show actual (or 'productive') hours worked by the individual across a range of activities, not just those hours spent on Research Council projects
• Range of activities to be categorised as follows:
  
  1. A separate row for actual productive hours spent on each RC project
  2. On non-Research Council funded activities, actual productive hours to be shown against the categories of 'Teaching/Research/Other'
  3. Productive time spent on support activities to be shown separately

See Documents for a sample RCUK compliant timesheet.

Academic Reporting to Funders

Most funders require periodic (e.g. annual) and final academic reports to be submitted to them describing activity on the funded project. Some funders will require these to be 'signed off' by the University before submission and this can be arranged via Research Services.

Research Councils grants include the requirement for the PI to complete a final report, usually within a timescale given in the award letter (typically three months after end of grant). It is the Department's responsibility to ensure that such a report is submitted on time. If the final report is not received, the Research Councils have the right to recover up to 20% of the total grant expenditure as a financial penalty (or all of the grant if six months overdue), and this cost will be borne by the department. Some departments have been sanctioned in recent months. In addition Research Councils will not accept future applications from PIs for whom final reports have not been received.

Further information about academic reports for specific sponsors can be found on our Sponsor Information pages.

A number of sponsors, especially the Research Councils, are introducing conditions that require grant holders to report on the outputs, outcomes and impacts of their funded research, both during the lifetime of the awards and afterwards. MRC has introduced its e-Val system, for example. Further requirements relating to others sponsors is being added to our Sponsor Information pages.

Publications, presentations and acknowledging research funders

Most major research funders include in their terms and conditions of award to grant-holders a requirement for researchers to acknowledge in any publication the support received from the funder in question.

The Research Information Network has produced Guidance on the Acknowledgement of Funders in Scholarly Journal Articles. The Guidance has been endorsed by the Research Councils, the Wellcome Trust, and the Association of Medical Research Charities, as well as by the Publishers Association and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.

Further information about specific sponsors can also be found on our Key Sponsor pages.

Depositing research data and/or publications in accessible repositories

An increasing number of funding bodies require that publications, resulting from the funded research are made available to other researchers and the wider world at the earliest possible date.

Funding organisations are also increasingly requiring grantees to deposit their raw research data in appropriate public archives or stores, in order to facilitate the validation of results and further work by other researchers.

• Sherpa Juliet site provides a summary of research funders' policieson access to research publications and access to data.
  • Research Councils UK (RCUK) has produced a gateway to the separate Research Councils' policies on access to research outputs.
  •  NIH (National Institutes of Health) Public Access Policy - summary of the mandatory NIH public access policy
• Sherpa RoMEOis a searchable database of publisher policies on the self-archiving of journal articles on the web and in Open Access repositories.
  • RoMEO contains publishers' general policies on self-archiving of journal and conference articles. Each entry provides a summary of the publisher's policy, including what version of an article can be deposited, where it can be deposited, and any conditions that are attached to that deposit.
• If the publisher charges a fee to make an article accessible free online, you may be able to reclaim that fee from the project funder - see the summary on the Sherpa Juliet site.
  • The Wellcome Trust provides block funding to Oxford to help researchers comply with its Open Access Policy. To seek reimbursement, please see the pages on the ASUC website.
• The Oxford University Research Archive (ORA), the University's online archive of research outputs, provides the means to comply with many of the funders' policies of deposit of publications in a suitable repository. For advice on how to submit items to ORA, see the Contribute pages.

What to do when the other party even hints at terminating a research agreement

On occasions, a University PI or an administrator will pick up hints or rumours that a research agreement might be terminated by the other party. Our very firm advice would be to act then and now - to follow up with the other party and see if there is an issue. The rumour might be unfounded. But there may be a problem to be addressed; for example, the other party may be unhappy about some aspect of the project. Or it might be nothing to do with the project as such but rather a change in circumstances, such as a 'new boss' reviewing commitments, or a company being in financial difficulties or being sold or taken over, or a change in direction for a government entity.

If a research agreement is in jeopardy or the other party is looking to reduce the size or duration of its investment, please let Research Services and Research Accounts know immediately. Termination clauses may need to be invoked and negotiations undertaken. If the funding is to be reduced, the project budget will need to be revised and an RPF2 issued.