European Commission It-How-To Manual

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Table of Contents:

Description

The Researchers tab in the continuous reporting will manage the:

  • Researcher declaration
  • Secondment data
  • Researcher's personal information

The Researcher Declaration is a mandatory document and must be submitted to the commission within 20 days of the Secondment of a staff member. The Model Grant Agreement for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) specifies which assignments of researchers are intended to be part of the action. The assignment is identified by a duration and the profile of the researcher, but without identifying exactly the person that will be assigned to the job. The Researcher Declaration is the document that links a specific Researcher to one of the assignments.

(warning) The researcher declaration is part of both continuous and periodic reporting. 


Source document 

The Model Grant Agreement for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action (MSCA) specifies that a Researcher Declaration needs to be submitted to the EU. 

(warning) The Researcher's Declaration in H2020 is the same as the Declaration of Conformity in FP7. 

Note that the Project Officer does not ‘accept’ or ‘reject’ the Researcher Declaration: they can only reopen it (the consortium can't reopen a submitted declaration). See "Important note" below for more information.  

Secondments

    • These projects deal with Secondments. As RISE is an exchange program the researcher is supposed to be already part of the participant organisation, and does not need to be recruited, instead it will be seconded to another participant.
    • The participants that are involved in the assignment can then play both roles:
      • They can be the Sending Organisation if the researcher is currently in their staff and it's being seconded to a different participant
      • They can be the Destination Organisation if they are receiving the researcher
      • The Researcher Declaration is submitted by the Sending Organisation or by the Coordinator if the Sending Organisation is a Partner Organisation and is done for the secondment. 


The recruitments/Secondments listed in the Grant Agreement are to be considered only provisional, so the declared ones can be different from ones originally listed in the Grant Agreement ones.

Automatic calculation of the costs in the Financial Statement based on the duration

The system automatically calculates the costs in the Financial Statement (these costs therefore won't be editable anymore in the Financial Statement), based on the:

  • duration (in person months) of the secondment period in the Researcher Declaration

The calculation happens as follows: 

  • For each submitted Researcher Declaration eligible for EU funding where the concerned beneficiary is either the Sending Organisation or the Secondment Organisation (the Sending Organisation being a Partner Organisation):
    • all consecutive Secondment Periods will be considered a single uninterrupted Secondment Period
    • only the part of the Secondment Period that falls in the relevant Reporting Period is considered
    • the number of units calculated as the sum of: 
      • the number of full months that fall in the Secondment Period
        (warning) Please note that a full month is calculated as follows:  from day X of month N, a full month ends the day before day X of month N+1; or the day before the last day of month N+1 if that month is shorter than X days (f.ex. a recruitment starting on 15 December 2019 and ending on 14 January 2020)
      • the number of remaining days divided by 30 (with 7 decimals)
  • the number of units calculated this way for each Secondment Period are then added up to get the total of the person/months that is used in the Financial Statement

The maximum cumulative length of all secondment periods for one researcher (12 months) is checked for each researcher when the Financial Statement is being locked for review (in addition to when a new Researcher Declaration is submitted). 

If the 12 month period is exceeded, then an error will be displayed for all researcher declarations already submitted by the affected researcher. In that case, the duration of secondment periods will need to be changed so that, in total, it would not exceed the maximum of 12 months. 

Important note

If the technical part or the financial statement is locked, changes to the researcher declaration will no longer be possible!

  • A researcher declaration can't be submitted if: 
    • a periodic report is open for the current project, and 
    • the Financial Statement for the Relevant Beneficiary or the Technical Part are not in draft, and
    • any Secondment Period of the Researcher Declaration falls in the relevant Reporting Period or in any of the previous Reporting Periods
  • A Researcher Declaration can't be reopened by the Project Officer if, as a consequence, it would require updating a non-draft Financial Statement or a locked Technical Part of an open Periodic Report: 
    • a Periodic Report is open for the current project and
    • the Financial Statement for the Relevant Beneficiary or the Technical Part are not in draft, and
    • any Secondment Period of the Researcher Declaration falls in the relevant Reporting Period or in any of the previous Reporting Periods
  • A Researcher Declaration can't be updated if, as a consequence, it would require updating a non-draft Financial Statement or a locked Technical Part: 
    • a Periodic Report is open for the current project and
    • the Financial Statement for the Relevant Beneficiary or the Technical Part are not in draft, and
    • with the update, any Secondment Period that falls in the relevant Reporting Period fulfils any of the following conditions:
      • has been added
      • has been removed
      • has a different start date
      • has a different end date and either the old one or the new one, or both are earlier or match the end date of the relevant Reporting Period
      • has a different working time commitment
  • A Researcher in the Project Library can't be reopened by the Project Officer if, as a consequence, it would require reopening a Researcher Declaration that would require updating a non-draft Financial Statement or a locked Technical Part of an open Periodic Report
    • a Periodic Report is open for the current project and
    • any of the Researcher Declarations linked to this Researcher can't be reopened according to behaviour 2 above (see second bullet point)

Relevant screens in the Participant Portal Grant Management Services

The researcher's tab is divided in two different parts:

  1. project's researcher library: here you can add a researcher 
  2. researcher declaration: here you can add a declaration for a researcher 

Title
Actions 

1.Project's Researcher Library

The researcher library contains the personal information about the researcher and states whether he has already submitted a researcher declaration. 

The same researcher could be assigned to different recruitments/secondments in the context of the same project. 

The personal data of a researcher can only be modified if s/he doesn’t take part in any submitted Researcher Declaration. 

In order to avoid re-entering multiple times the personal information about the same person, a Project Researcher Library has been implemented with the information about researchers that have taken part in the project. 

(warning) The scope of the library is only on the Grant Agreement/project level: the beneficiary of a consortium cannot access information about researchers in other projects.


Adding a researcher

  • Click Add Researcher to add a researcher which is not listed in the Researcher Library

  • Complete the personal information of the researcher:

    • Title

    • First name
    • Last name
    • Researcher category (ADM stands for administrative)
    • Gender
    • Birth date
    • Nationality
    • Past countries of residence (Click the to add more than one past country of residence)
    • Email
    • click ok
    • click
    • (clickto delete the researcher)

Creating a declaration for this researcher

Click to add a declaration for this researcher (see "adding a declaration" below for more information on how to complete the rest of the steps)

2. Researcher Declaration (researcher declares to have been seconded for a certain secondment period)

Each time a researcher is seconded, a researcher declaration must be added.


Adding a declaration


  • Click Add declaration 
     

 Complete the researcher information tab

 

  • click to choose a researcher and click ok
     
  • indicate whether the researcher is enrolled in a PhD programme
  • click ok
  • check whether there's validation errors appearing next to the tab title

(warning) if you still want to change the researcher, click and select another researcher


Complete the Secondment information tab

 

  • Click , if you want to use the secondment information present in the Grant Agreement Preparation (GAP) phase

(warning) Secondments that are not foreseen can be added manually to the project

  • Complete the information for the sending organisation (the Sending organisation usually coincides with the beneficiary that is creating the Researcher Declaration, so in this case there is no choice to be made. When the Sending Organisation is a Partner Organisation, the 
    Coordinator has to create the Researcher Declaration for them. When the Coordinator accesses the page, he will see not only its legal name but also will have a choice among all the partner organisations.):
    • The legal name is prefilled because the researcher is already recruited by a beneficiary)
    • the country
    • The sector* is prefilled
  • Complete the information for the destination organisation (The Destination Organisation will be chosen amongst all the beneficiaries 
    and partner organisations. It cannot coincide with the sending organisation):
    • Select the legal name
    • the country (automatically selected when the legal name has been chosen)
    • the sector* is prefilled
  • Complete the other information:

    • select all the work packages the Researcher is going to work on

      (warning) Please note that the selection of WP choice is not editable once the Researcher Declaration is Submitted. In case of changes after submission, the Project Officer will have to re-open the declaration for further editing and re-submission.  
    • click ok

Complete the Secondment period tab

  • Select the start date
  • Select the end date
    (Researcher's Declarations for the terminated beneficiary cannot extend after the beneficiary termination date)
  • Select the working time commitment
  • click to add a secondment period and select the start date, end date and the working time commitment; if more secondment periods need to be added (i.e. in the case of split stays), the operation can be repeated.
  • click ok
  • click

Editing a declaration

Once the user has completed the instructions above, by creating a declaration, the system adds the new Researcher Declaration to the Researcher Declaration list, in DRAFT status.

 (warning) Please note that for declarations in this status all data is still editable: click on the relevant declaration to edit again 

Submitting a declaration

  • Click Submit researcher declaration
      
  • Confirm that the following statements are true by checking the boxes (only then the submit button will be available)


  • Click to submit the declaration
    (warning) Once a Researcher Declaration has been submitted, the only data that’s still editable are the periods. The status of the declaration is now "submitted" and the logically the submit button is no longer available.

    (warning)  If any other information needs to be changed (i.e. the work packages), the Project Officer must re-open the declaration for further editing &re-submission.   

* Sector of an organisation

  • The Destination Organisation Sector is Academic if the organisation is: 
    • Public or Private an "Higher Education Institution" 
    • "Non-profit Organisation" and a "Research organisation" 
    • "International and European Interest Organisation" 
  • The Organisation Sector is Non-Academic in all other cases


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