NAFI Annual Report Guidelines - Final

Division of Materials Research

National User Facility Annual Report Guidelines

The DMR National Facility (NAFI) annual report is a summary of the current year, back to the last annual report, and provides forward looking plans. Your Sponsored Projects

Significant Change: Transition from FastLane to the new Research Performance Project Report (RPPR) system in Research.gov as follows:

In accordance with the instructions provided in this document, NAFI Annual Project Reports must be submitted directly to the cognizant DMR Program Director as a single PDF via e-mail and include the contents as specified in these guidelines. The submitted report will be uploaded into the NSF eJacket system by the Program Director. The Annual Report will be reviewed and approved within eJacket, as was done when the reports were submitted via FastLane. The facility does not use Research.gov to submit the contents of its Annual Report, but it does use Research.gov to indicate that the Report has been submitted, as described below.

 

• Submit notification to Research.gov as follows:

O Cover Tab: Review all the information displayed in the Cover tab within the Annual Project Report section of Research.gov. Please verify the information in the Cover Tab within the Annual Project Report section of Research.gov. If any corrections are required, contact the Research.gov Help Desk 7 AM - 9 PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday (except federal holidays) at rgov@nsf.gov or 1-800-381-1532.

o Accomplishments Tab: Under the Accomplishments tab, insert the following statement into the first box that asks “What are the major goals of the project?”

• “In accordance with the instructions provided to the DMR National Facilities (NAFI), the Annual Project Report has been submitted separately directly to the cognizant Program Director and includes the content specified in the guidelines. The report is uploaded into the NSF eJacket system.”

• Next, there are four boxes under the question, “What was accomplished under these goals (you must provide information for at least one of the 4 categories below)?”  In the first box, Major Activities, insert the same statement identified above: “In accordance with the instructions provided to the facilities in the NAFI Annual Reporting Guidelines, the Annual Project Report has been submitted separately directly to the cognizant Program Director and includes the content specified in the guidelines. The report is uploaded into the NSF eJacket system.”

• Leave the next three boxes blank.

• The last three boxes have a “nothing to report” or “no change” checkbox.  Do not enter any text; just mark the “nothing to report” or “no change” checkbox for each question.

o Products tab: Under the products tab, do not enter any information. Mark the “nothing to report” checkbox for each question.

o    Participants tab: The section “What individuals have worked on the project?” will be pre-populated with the names of the PIs listed on the cover page of the NSF proposal. Review and edit as appropriate.

• For the “What other organizations have been involved as partners?” question, mark the “nothing to report” checkbox.

• For the “Have other collaborators or contacts been involved?” mark No.

o    Impact tab: Mark the “nothing to report” checkbox for all of the questions.

o    Changes/Problems tab: Mark the “nothing to report” checkbox for all of the questions.

o    Certify and submit. Check the Certification checkbox and click on the Submit Report Button.

 

Note: All of the information regarding the facilities accomplishments, contributions, publications, products, etc. must be contained within the Annual Report that is submitted directly to the Program Director.  Entering “nothing to report” in the Annual Report submission in Research.gov  does not imply that the facility did not make progress or contributions during the reporting period.  It is a means of allowing the facilities to continue to report under the NAFI Annual Reporting guidelines and submitting an integrated set of documents useful to site visit teams and to NSF Program Directors.

 

Additional Changes:

1. NSF requires that an Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) sign any budget submissions to NSF that are included as part of any annual project report or requested as part of a mid-year increment.

2. All gender and minority status data must be self-reported by individuals.

Format for NAFI Annual Reports

1. Table of Contents

2. List of Key Facility Faculty and Staff

• Typically PI’s, User Facility Directors, and staff scientists Include Name, Department, and instrument (or role such as Director, Education Coordinator, Safety Officer, etc.)

3. Director’s Executive Summary – limit 5 pages

• Intellectual Merit

• Broader Impact

• Response to external advisory committee or site visit recommendations

• Plans for the coming year

4. Facility

• Operations Plan

• Management

  • Org Chart

  • List of External Advisory Committee Members and Affiliation

  • List of User Group Officers and Affiliation

  • Budget / Issues – resolutions

  • Personnel: staffing, new hires, succession planning, diversity plan

  • Cost recovery from service / industry use

• User Program

• Outreach to generate new proposals

• Review Process

• Training / safety of users

• User Group Meeting(s)

• Safety

• Accomplishments / Discovery

  • Facility Level

  • in-House research

• Education / Outreach / Diversity

• User Meetings / Workshops / Conferences

• Interactions with industry / National Labs / international collaborations

• Data Management Plan – limit 2 pages

• Post-doc Mentoring Plan – limit 1 page

5. Beamlines / User Facilities – 2 pages each

• Instrument capability

  • Unique aspects

• Development / enhancement: new sample environment, new configuration, software, etc

• Major research activities / Discoveries

• Plans / Directions

6. Highlights: Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts

• Facility level

• User Level (1-2 per user facility or end station per year)

7. List of successful User Proposals by User Facility / Beamline

• Include PI name, affiliation, title of the proposal, and the number of days awarded

8. List of Publications by User Facility / Beamline

9. List of Ph.D. and M.S. Theses

10. List of Honors and Awards to Facility Participants / Staff

11. Budgets

    • Statement of total residual funds from the beginning of the current cooperative agreement

    • Closing year as spent budget, NSF Form 1030

    • Requested year budget, NSF Form 1030, including budget justification

12. Data Tables

1. Facility Participants / Staff

• List by Senior Personnel, Other Professional, Post-docs, Graduate Students, Undergraduates,

• Include department affiliation

• At the end of each list indicate the %women, %African American, % Hispanic, %Native American, and %Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander

2. Education Program data

• List of REU, RET, informal science participants, etc.

• At the end of each list indicate the %women, %African American, % Hispanic, %Native American, and %Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander

3. Facility Operations

• Provide a figure showing the facility operating schedule for the past year.

4. Instrument Operations

User Facility / Beamline	# days Instr. operations	# days user program	# days in-house research	# days instrument development	# days maintenance	# days to awardee institution faculty
Instr 1
Instr 2
Instr 3
Instr 4
Etc.

5. User Program Proposal Pressure by User Program / Beamline

User Program / Beamline	# proposals received	# proposals reviewed	# days requested in reviewed proposals	# days allocated to outside users	# days allocated to awardee organization personnel	Total # days allocated	% Oversubscription (# days requested / # days allocated)
Instr 1
Instr 2
Instr 3
Instr 4
Etc.

6. User Program Demographics*

	# PIs	%women PIs	%URM PIs	# industry PIs	# National Labs PIs	# International PIs	# New PIs
PIs on proposals
PIs that come to do experiments

	# PDs	%women PDs	%URM PDs	# Grad Students	% women Grad stud	% URM Grad Stud	Etc.
Post-docs and students that come for experiments

* Awardees are required to set-up a system where all gender and minority status data is self-reported by individuals.

7. Geographic Distribution of PI institutions

• Provide a figure or table showing the US geographic distribution of PIs by home institution.

• Provide a figure or table showing the global geographic distribution of PIs by home institution.

8. Funding Source of User’s Research- Fraction of days allotted

User Facility / Beamline	NSF	NIH	DOE	DOD	Industry	National lab	Inter-national	Foundation / Other (specify)	Sum
Instr 1
Instr 2
Instr 3
Instr 4
Etc.

9. Output – Must Acknowledge the facility and/or award #

User Facility / Beamline	# refereed publications	# presen-tations	# patents	# Ph.D. theses – primarily based on research at this facility	# Ph.D. theses – secondary	# M.S theses – primarily	# M.S. theses – secondary
Instr 1
Instr 2
Instr 3
Instr 4
Etc.