Nominated Principal Investigators to Begin Reporting on Research Results as of March 31, 2011

(2011-03-24) As of March 31, 2011, CIHR will be asking Nominated Principal Investigators (NPIs) to begin reporting their research results data via its new Research Reporting System (RRS). This tool has been put in place to obtain richer evidence on the effectiveness of CIHR funding programs and also to advance CIHR's Knowledge Translation mandate.

RRS will be an important tool for CIHR's accountability within the Federal Government and to Canadians for the funds it provides for health research. CIHR will also use the RRS data for a variety of internal uses to better manage the process of funding health research.

As well, the agency plans to make selected RRS data available to partners, the research community and the general public. This will help demonstrate the impact of CIHR-funded research and support CIHR's open access policy. The publicly available data will also assist the research community in a number of ways by:

• avoiding duplication of research; 
• identifying possible collaborations, training opportunities and partnerships; 
• identifying research trends, gaps and opportunities.

All NPIs on Open Grants and selected priority announcements where the authority to spend funds expires as of March 31, 2011 or later will have to submit reports via RRS. CIHR will inform the affected NPIs via e-mail on their requirement to complete a report. Only essential data will be requested, and CIHR expects that the average time to complete a report will be one hour.

NPIs will have 18 months after the end of the grant period to complete their reports, and CIHR will provide on-going support to assist NPIs in this task.

Where possible, data will be pre-populated to minimize input burden. Linkages with the Common CV and PubMed will be in place by Fall 2011.