SCIENTIFIC REPORTING GUIDELINES

Annual reporting

Project Research Plans and Schedules of Deliverables are mandatory parts of the Project Consortium Agreements and Grant Agreements between the National Funding Institutions (NFIs) and Participants of the Project. Research projects of the BONUS Programme are maximum 36 months long. The lifetime of project is divided into three reporting periods: months 1 –12, months 13 – 24, and months 25 – 36.  No later than 30 days after ending of each of the reporting periods, projects submit to the BONUS Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS), accordingly, the Y1, Y2 and the final report.

These reports shall summarize briefly the performance of project during the reporting period in context of the original Research Plan and Schedule of Deliverables, accounting the main deliverables produced and milestones passed, discuss issues encountered, and the solutions found. If any deviations from the Research Plan and Schedule of Deliverables have happened or are expected to happen in the next reporting period, these shall be explained in the yearly report.

The final report focuses on the outcomes of the Project with emphasis on the impact of its results. Final report shall contain an Executive Summary (no more than 10 000 characters including spaces), and a chapter dealing with the further research and exploitation of the results. It is recommended to keep both yearly and final reports concentrated: not exceeding 1 page (around 4000 characters including spaces) per work package. The model headings of the Annual and Final reports would be:
-    Project acronym
-    Reporting period
-    Executive summary (only the Final report)
-    Gained scientific results during the reporting period (may be subdevided into WP chapters)
-    Practical implementation of project outputs (performance statistics 1-4)
-    Comparison with the original research and financial plan,
-    Statement if the research plan and schedule of deliverables had to be adapted (if yes please mention the consequences: Will these changes influence any third party? Are there any changes in the further work plan expected? Are there any changes expected for the deliverables?)
-    Further research and exploitation of the results (only the Final report)
 
Annual and Final reports are uploaded in EPSS as Portable Document Format (.pdf) files. Project coordinator is responsible for compiling and submission of these reports. Annual and Final reports are public. They are distributed to all participants of the project and to the National Funding Institutions funding Participants of the project.

Before submitting the report, check if performance statistics and information on research infrastructures is up to date!

Reporting on production of deliverables

BONUS EEIG Programme management is aiming to be able to monitor the work in each of the funded projects in a near-to-real-time manner and in the same time to lighten the burden the formalized reporting paperwork as much as possible. With this purpose a web-based system for reporting about the produced deliverables (EPSS) is being established. Project teams are encouraged to submit brief formalized information about each of deliverables as soon as the work on it has been accomplished, but not rarer than each year of the project lifetime. Information on each deliverable is submitted to BONUS EPSS by the responsible Workpackage leader identified in the Project’s Research Plan.

Coordinator’s duty is (1) to supply WP leaders by relevant BONUS EPSS access keys, (2) to review and, if acceptable, approve each of the deliverables. If a deliverable is not accepted by Coordinator, he/she shall explain to the responsible WP leader the problem, and require necessary modification/improvement. Deliverable accepted by Coordinator is closed for further modification. Deliverables without Coordinator’s approval are not considered by the BONUS EEIG as finalized. For voluminous deliverables and especially – deliverables of non-textual nature (as events, models etc.), brief annotations (not more than 8 000 characters with spaces) shall be submitted.

Projects are encouraged to publish information about their deliverables in the Project’s own web-page. BONUS Secretariat accumulates the information about deliverables of BONUS+ Projects and their annotations in the BONUS Data Base of Deliverables and publishes it in the BONUS Portal. In addition to reporting on project deliverables Coordinators are requested each year to update statistical information needed to monitor the global Programme performance indicators.