Each network should aim to establish procedures for joint reporting at network level in order to have information on entire projects available instead of fragments of partial information. The joint reporting and any national/regional reporting should be coordinated as much as possible to avoid duplication of work.
National/regional reporting will normally focus on the work performed by the respective national/regional researchers. In the joint reporting and monitoring the focus should be on the entire project and on the added value of the transnational cooperation. Indicators for assessing this added value may depend on what kind of research is supported. Example templates are provided. Networks may want to modify these according to their specific needs.
Many funding organisations will request similar categories of information so that it makes sense to explore possibilities for creating one single reporting system that covers the needs of all organisations as much as possible.
Harmonisation of reporting and monitoring requirements should not be restricted to networks and national/regional systems. Since many applicants may have some experience from Horizon 2020 projects there may be good reasons to explore harmonisation also with the Horizon 2020 reporting and monitoring system.
For joint calls where there is only one contract –between the project coordinator and the call secretariat– the reporting will be common for the entire project. This means that all involved funding organisations will leave the task of collecting reports to a call secretariat acting on their behalf.
Setting up a system for common monitoring and reporting may also have a cost aspect. If one funding organisation takes over the task to collect and analyse reports on behalf of the entire network there should be an appropriate budget set aside to cover these efforts. Provisions for securing such a budget should be included in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) or other legal text.
Advice for Co-funded European Partnerships: Data of submitted and selected projects must be transferred to the EC database using a template provided by DG RTD.
Advice for ERA-NET COFUND: For the cofunded call the network must provide reports on the funded projects to the European Commission (EC) after the end of the projects. A table that has to be used for the monitoring of funded projects from the co-funded call is included in the section ERA-NET Cofund under H2020: practical information. It is therefore essential to establish a system for monitoring the funded projects well in advance.
