DOE program
EFRC reporting, and where the year actually goes
Energy Frontier Research Center
An EFRC reports to DOE rather than NSF. The template is different, the substance is not, and centers running both feel the duplication immediately.
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What the report leans on
The same center accounting an NSF program expects, on DOE's own template and cadence.
The sections that cost the most time
- Format translation
- The data an EFRC report needs is the data an NSF center report needs, arranged differently. Institutions running both often maintain two parallel manual processes for one set of facts.
- Thrust and team attribution
- As with a MRSEC, output has to attribute to the right research group for the right period, and group membership moves during the year.
- Shared facilities and instruments
- Usage, external access and training, from logs kept for operational reasons rather than reporting ones.
- Publication acknowledgment
- Checked against the DOE award, with the same authors forgetting in the same way.
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In more detail
What an EFRC is
Energy Frontier Research Centers are the Department of Energy's multi-investigator research centers, funded through the Office of Science. Operationally they look very like an NSF MRSEC: research thrusts, shared facilities, a personnel roster spanning institutions, and an annual accounting 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 substance, what any center report asks for. Personnel with roles and periods. Publications with acknowledgment verified against the award. Outreach and its participation data. Events, partnerships, facilities usage, and forward plans.
In format, something different enough that a process built for NSF does not simply run. Section ordering differs, some sections are required that are optional elsewhere, and the submission route is its own.
Where the time actually goes
Into doing the same work twice.
Plenty of institutions hold both NSF and DOE center awards, sometimes with overlapping people and shared facilities. The facts underneath both reports are largely the same facts. But because each report is produced as a document rather than as a view over data, the second one is not cheaper than the first. It is a second full round of chasing, with a different deadline.
The record the report comes out of
An EFRC is operationally a MRSEC that reports to a different agency: thrusts, shared facilities, a roster spanning institutions, and a year of the same facts to assemble.
We run the NSF program sites for MRSEC, PREM, NeuroNex and the Materials Innovation Platforms. Close to a decade of running centers of exactly this shape.
The platform holds the center record both kinds of report are produced from. Publications import by DOI through CrossRef, with the funding acknowledgment parsed and matched against the award number rather than taken on trust. People carry roles with start and end dates, so a question about the reporting period returns a reporting-period answer. Projects, outreach and funding sit in the same record.
Reporting is a data problem before it is a document problem, and a center holding two awards is where that costs the most.
Other programs
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NSF program
MRSEC reporting
Multi-institutional materials centers. The report turns on thrust structure and the shared-facilities story, and both need data collected all year.
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NSF program
MIP reporting
Mid-scale user facilities for materials synthesis, characterization and theory. Most reportable output comes from external users.
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NSF program
DMREF reporting
Smaller, focused materials-design awards. The reporting machinery is nearly a center's, without a center's coordinator.
Reporting season should be a review, not a reconstruction.
Thirty minutes, no deck. Tell us which sections cost you the most last year and we will tell you whether they are worth automating.