Final reporting
The final report is drawn up by you as principal investigator in cooperation with the research administration. Technical and financial final reporting must be carried out in accordance with the funding agency’s reporting requirements.
- The final report should be submitted as soon as the project is finalised.
- A project is finalised when all activity on the project is completed and all costs are posted in the project accounts.
- Typically, the deadline for submitting the final report will be 1 month after the end of the project.
Final report requirements
The requirements depend on the funding source.
- Some contributors only require a simple technical summary of the project's research results.
- It is more usual to report on the different result indicators:
- number of publications,
- number of qualified PhD Candidates,
- number of conferences
- (...)
- In addition, you must attach the project's final accounts, as well as explain any discrepancies.
The Research Council of Norway and the EU have clear requirements for final reporting on their projects:
Publications and results
Following publication, the principal investigator is responsible for:
- checking that the result is correctly registered in the Cristin database (the publication indicator)
- uploading the article to the research archive in Cristin (Open Access)
- inserting the project code from the Research Council of Norway in Cristin (final reporting)
Read more about what to do after publication
Research data archiving
There are both national, international, and domain-specific archives that meet international standards for archiving research data and making it accessible. UiO’s researchers can choose the archiving solutions that are most appropriate to their discipline. At the same time the archives must fulfil the FAIR principles. Remember that the data management plan is part of the final reporting.
Read more about archiving and examples of archives
Communication of results
Research- and innovation results must be communicated to the target groups for the project in order to demonstrate the research's results and social contribution.
Read more on the web page on communication and impact in externally funded projects (in Norwegian)
Commercialisation
What do you do when you have an idea or technology that has a commercial potential?
- UiO’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO) is Inven2 and manages, develops and commercialises all work and research results from UiO that have commercial potential.
- UiO’s employees have a duty to notify Inven2 of research results with a commercial potential. Please contact Inven2 to obtain help in assessing, verifying, and possibly further developing research results with a commercial potential. The idea does not need to be fully developed.
Read more about:
- UiO’s policy for the management of intellectual property rights (IPR)
- Employees’ rights to work results
- The IPR Committee (in Norwegian)
Evaluation after project finalisation
When a project is finished, it should be evaluated.
The principal investigator, research adviser and project controller (and possibly others who have had an active role in managing the project) go through the life of the project from creation to finalisation.
The purpose of the evaluation:
Reveal what has worked, what has not worked and possibly suggest improvements.
What should be evaluated?
The technical aspects of the project:
- Operation
- Funding
- Cooperation with administration
- Reporting to funding agency
The professional aspects of the project:
- To what extent did you deliver the research you promised the funding agency?
- How was cooperation within the project team?
The evaluation should conclude with a brief written summary to be stored in the project folder.
Audit
- Projects may be audited to check that laws and regulations are complied to. This can relate to economy, data processing, treatment of experimental animals or other factors.
- The Norwegian Data Protection Authority and the Norwegian Food Safety Authority are government agencies that may request an audit. In addition, as project owner, UiO can perform a local audit.
- The funding agency can carry out an audit of the economy in externally funded projects. This is particularly relevant for EU projects.
- Under Horizon 2020, all projects must have Certificate on the Financial Statement when used funds exceed a certain amount - this is referred to as a planned audit.
- In addition, the Commission may carry out an unplanned audit up to two years after completion of the project.
More information about the audit of EU projects can be found on the Management and reporting of H2020 projects pages.
Financial project termination
When the activity is planned to be concluded as per the contract, the units have 6 months to finalise the accounts before the project is finalised in the accounting system.
This involves the following:
- Send final report to funding agency
- Settle any outstanding allocation
- Repay unused funds
- Ensure that all invoices have been included
- Carry out all buyouts
- Follow up on residual payments from the funding agency
If the project activity is delayed or the project extended, it is important that the project controller is informed of this as soon as possible.
If this is not followed up then, as principal investigator, you risk that the project will be terminated before it is concluded.
Concluded projects cannot be reopened, and remaining project accounting will then have to be recorded on another project account.
Contact the finance department in your unit (in Norwegian)
Unit pages about externally funded projects
All the faculties, some departments and our museums have local pages about externally funded projects:
- Faculty of Humanitites (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Law (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Medicine
- Faculty of Dentistry (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Social Sciences (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Theology (in Norwegian)
- Faculty of Educational Sciences (in Norwegian)
- Museum of Cultural History (in Norwegian)
- Natural History Museum (in Norwegian)
Questions?
Contact your local research support at your faculty/centre/department