Annual reporting guide · Department of Energy program
EFRC annual reporting: what the report needs and where the time goes
Energy Frontier Research Center
An EFRC reports to the Department of Energy (DOE) instead of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The template is different, the content is almost the same, and centers with both kinds of award report the same facts twice.
What reviewers look for
The same center accounting an NSF program expects, on DOE's own template and schedule.
The sections that cost the most time
- Reformatting for DOE
- An EFRC report needs the same data as an NSF center report, arranged differently. Institutions with both kinds of award often keep two separate manual processes for one set of facts.
- Thrust and team attribution
- As with a MRSEC, each output has to be attributed to the right research group for the right period, and group membership changes during the year.
- Shared facilities and instruments
- Usage, external access and training, from logs kept for day-to-day operations instead of for reporting.
- Publication acknowledgment
- Each paper must be checked against the DOE award, and authors forget to cite it in the same way.
What an EFRC is
Energy Frontier Research Centers are the Department of Energy's multi-investigator research centers, funded through the Office of Science. They work much like an NSF MRSEC: research thrusts, shared facilities, people at several institutions, and an annual account of all of it.
The difference is the agency. An EFRC reports to DOE, on DOE's template, through DOE's process.
What the annual report asks for
In content, it asks for what any center report asks for: personnel with roles and dates, publications with the award acknowledgment checked, outreach and its participation data, events, partnerships, facilities usage, and plans for the next period.
In format, it is different enough that a process built for NSF does not carry over. The section order differs, some sections are required that are optional elsewhere, and the submission process is separate.
Where the time goes
Centers with both NSF and DOE awards report the same facts twice.
Many institutions hold both NSF and DOE center awards, sometimes with the same people and shared facilities. The facts behind both reports are largely the same. Each report is produced as a separate document, so the second one takes as long as the first. It is a second full round of collecting information, with a different deadline.
How SimplyScholar helps
An EFRC works much like a MRSEC that reports to a different agency: thrusts, shared facilities, people at several institutions, and a year of facts to assemble.
We have built National Science Foundation program websites since 2016, including mrsec.org, prem-dmr.org, dmref.org and mip.org. Each one serves a whole program whose centers have this same structure.
SimplyScholar, our software for research centers, keeps one center record that both kinds of report can draw on. Publications are imported from CrossRef by Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and matched to your researchers. People have roles with start and end dates, so a question about the reporting period gets an answer for that period. Projects and outreach are kept in the same record, and the center's public website is built from it.
A center with two awards gains the most from keeping those facts in one place.
Other annual reporting guides
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National Science Foundation program
MRSEC annual reporting guide
Multi-institutional materials centers. The report depends on the thrust structure and the shared facilities, and both need data collected all year.
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National Science Foundation program
MIP annual reporting guide
Mid-scale user facilities for materials synthesis, characterization and theory. Most reportable output comes from external users.
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National Science Foundation program
DMREF annual reporting guide
Smaller, focused materials design awards. The reporting work is nearly a center's, without a center's coordinator.
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