STANFORD UNIVERSITY * MEMORANDUM * STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Date: April 25, 2002

TO: Stanford Principal Investigators

FROM: Geoff Grant, Associate Vice President, Office of Research Administration

Charles Kruger, Vice Provost and Dean of Research and Graduate Policy

SUBJECT: Project reporting requirements

cc: School and Department research administration staff

Several of our research sponsors have taken issue with late submissions of final project reports (technical, patent, property, and financial reports). As you know, most reports are due 90 days after the completion of a project. Stanford's cognizant government agency, the Office of Naval Research (ONR), recently issued a formal request for a corrective action plan to submit all currently delinquent reports and to describe how we plan to stay current in the future. Other sponsors, including NIH, NSF and NASA, have recently threatened to either withhold incremental funding or final payments until they receive outstanding reports.

Our corrective action plan includes the following steps:

- On a regular schedule in advance of project end dates, the Office of Sponsored Research (OSR) will notify PIs of upcoming due dates and procedures for submitting required reports.

- We will improve our record keeping after reports are submitted, so that staff in OSR and in the schools can respond efficiently to follow-up inquiries from sponsors.

- OSR will provide Schools and Labs with periodic lists of outstanding reports to assist in getting them delivered as soon as possible.

- Reports currently listed as overdue by ONR must be submitted no later than

June 30. (Individual notice of the overdue reports have been provided to PIs.)

For those of you who regularly submit project reports in a timely manner, this plan will be largely invisible. To help in preventing miscommunications, we ask however that, when submitting a final project report, all PIs provide a copy of the front page or cover letter to OSR or, in the case of the Schools of Medicine and Engineering, to RMG or ERA respectively. This will improve our documentation and avoid having to go back to the PI to ask later.

Significant or persistent reporting delinquencies will be grounds for notifications to school deans, and could lead to penalties including suspension of future proposal submissions.

We appreciate your support in this important effort. It is easy to become distracted by other research or teaching responsibilities by the time final reports are due. Their timely submission however is an important stewardship responsibility on behalf of Stanford University.