City University London received a visit from the audit firm Ernst & Young in relation to declaring the costs incurred on certain FP7 projects. The auditors have been advised by the European Commission to check that travel boarding passes are kept and presented as part of the audit trail. Therefore with immediate effect all participants in projects are required to submit their boarding passes for travel paid by an EC-FP7 grant.

In February Ernst & Young were appointed by the European Commission to audit some of the cost statements the University had submitted to the European Commission in declaring costs incurred on certain FP7 projects. The audit firm was pleased with the way the files were presented. This may sound trivial but the auditors have to look through big stacks of paperwork and presentation is essential for good cooperation. EC auditors want to see the audit trail for every item of expenditure and any item of expenditure for which the University cannot provide the related invoice or receipt at the time of the audit or within reasonable time thereafter will be disallowed, meaning that the cost has to be met from other budgets. Any salary cost for which no signed timesheets are presented will be disallowed – this also explains the Research Office’s insistence on timesheets.

The Research Office also received an important hint at the last audit visit about future compliance checks. Auditors have been advised by the Commission to check that boarding passes are kept and presented as part of the audit trail.

All participants in EC-FP7 projects are therefore required to submit their boarding passes for travel paid by an EC-FP7 project either to the Research Office directly or as part of an expenses claim in relation to that particular travel.

The need to present boarding passes as part of the audit trail implies that only travel which has actually occurred can be claimed back from the project. If the University has paid for a flight ticket but the University staff in question did not in the event travel, the European Commission will not pay. You may now ask what if a flight is missed because of unforeseen delays on the way to the airport or the staff member in question had to cancel because of sickness. The Financial Guidelines for FP7 do not explicitly refer to these cases. However, according to the guidelines, only activity that has taken place can be charged to the project. Missed or cancelled flights are activity that has not taken place, hence not an eligible cost to the project. Such cases should be discussed with Purchasing Services for refund from the supplier or more likely refund through the University’s insurance.

Once again it is essential to submit your boarding passes for all travel undertaken as part of an EC-FP7 project as soon as possible. This requirement is effective immediately.

For more information please contact Dr Claudia Kalay in the Research Office on claudia.kalay.1@city.ac.uk.

The draft Code of Practice for the selection of staff for REF 2014 is now available on the REF microsite. This has been considered in a number of University committees and approved for dissemination to staff in its draft form. The University is required to submit its Code to the Funding Councils by 31 July 2012 for approval for use during the selection process for REF 2014. The current draft will be reviewed after the REF rehearsals, which are now underway, and in the light of any further feedback received.

Further discussion is also to take place with the Equality Committee regarding the details of the process for dealing with any sensitive personal circumstances raised by staff. This part of the process allows for the inclusion of staff in the University REF submission with fewer than the required number of research outputs without incurring any penalty.

The document includes a cover paper which explains the background to the Code and the points raised in discussion within the University. The draft Code sets out the details of the procedure which will be used in the selection process. There is still further work to be done both within Schools and at University level through the REF Steering Group to define the criteria against which staff will be selected for each Unit of Assessment, within the context of a University threshold requiring four outputs of at least 3* quality (or a reduced number of outputs where individual circumstances apply in accordance with the REF guidance on submissions), unless there is a strategic reason for the inclusion of a member of staff with fewer outputs at this quality level. These details will be published along with the final version of the Code later in the year.

The threshold for inclusion has been set in the context of the future funding of research in universities through the QR funding received from the Higher Education Council Funding for England. It has been confirmed that funding will only be provided after REF 2014 for research assessed as of 3* or 4* quality, with considerable weighting towards 4* activity expected. All UK universities are therefore focusing their REF submissions on research activity of the highest quality.

You can read more about this and download the Code via www.city.ac.uk/ref/preparations-at-city/equality-code.

Those of you who have held grants from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) or Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) in the past six years will be aware that the first data-gathering exercise is underway now.  With the system having gone live in November, the race is on to fill it with data.

The Research Councils have assured universities that data previously provided in final reports will be uploaded to the ROS by them. This should cover a lot of old records. In future, Councils expect grant-holders to update the system regularly as part of the grant-holder’s responsibility.

In order to avoid having to type in publication data twice, City Research Online (CRO – City’s institutional repository) offers the option to extract your stored publication data for the publications linked with your grant or grants into a spreadsheet which can be uploaded to other systems needing only easy layout configurations. This way, you can make CRO your main reference for publication data and upload to other systems as needed. This is a more efficient way to handle your own publication records.

ROS also collects narrative information on key findings and impact.  These can be added per grant directly in the ROS. Councils will use the information gathered to showcase research outcomes and impact so clearly we only stand a chance of featuring in such publicity if academic staff have provided their data. The Councils will in particular use it to strengthen their case for funding in talks with the Government.

The importance of the system has been underlined by the EPSRC’s decision to use it for final reporting on outputs and outcomes in the future. There will still be a short final report form to be completed on Je-S but that form will only include a small number of fields to pass the validation check. ROS should be used to report outcomes.

ESRC has replaced the old ESRC Society Today system with ROS. All grant-holders have to publish their abstracts now on ROS. NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) will start using the ROS in 2013.

EPSRC, ESRC, AHRC and BBSRC have been late in launching their data collection system. The Medical Research Council (MRC) and the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) have been running their own data collection systems for some time now. About a year ago, the Science and Technology Facilities (STF) Council adopted the MRC’s eVal system for its own data collection.

For more information, contact Dr Claudia Kalay on Claudia.kalay.1@city.ac.uk

For guidance on use of City Research Online, contact the CRO team on publications@city.ac.uk

In a bid to improve the way expenses are monitored and reconciled, the Research Grants and Contracts (RGC) team reminds Principal Investigators (PIs) that it is important to implement commitment accounting. A simple spreadsheet to record expenditure committed on projects is sufficient. This helps to ensure that all expected and planned expenditure can be captured on a timely basis resulting in more effective budget monitoring and forecasting accuracy.

The need for commitment accounting was first raised by the internal audit in 2010 and PIs were asked at the time to start keeping local spreadsheets. A subsequent internal audit in September 2011 found that, from a sample of five projects, none of the PIs kept a log of commitments locally. The internal audit report therefore issued a recommendation for PIs to keep a local record of future commitments (expenses) to support accurate and timely financial monitoring, and inform the Research Office in a timely manner of any expense claims over £500.

The RGC team recognises both the importance of the recommendation and the additional practical effort involved in setting this up locally. In order to help this along we would like to work with PIs in finding a mutually convenient solution. The RGC team prefers to work in cooperation with PIs rather than set up an Excel template and simply tell you all to use this from now on and submit to the RGC team on a regular basis.

The RGC team would be grateful for feedback on this issue to learn what is already done locally and how the RGC team could help implement this recommendation.

Please contact Dr Claudia Kalay on Claudia.kalay.1@city.ac.uk with your feedback and suggestions.