Monitoring and reporting

Project monitoring and reporting

Monitoring funded projects and evaluating their impact are part of the statutory duties of the SRC. Monitoring and evaluation of SRC-funded projects is aligned with SRC funding principles. The monitoring and evaluation support the supervisory task defined in the Finnish Act on Discretionary Government Grants. They also serve other purposes:

  • strategic management and steering of SRC-funded projects and programmes
  • learning from experience, disseminating good practices
  • making the impact and benefits of strategic research visible
  • knowledge production to further develop the SRC funding instrument.

Projects report on their activities according to programme-specific guidelines. A consortium reports on its activities as a whole, not separately for each subproject. In selecting and outlining the information to be reported, a suitable guideline is whether the funding granted under the SRC programme has been an essential prerequisite for the creation of the activity, outputs or results, etc., and whether they have emerged as a result of the implementation of the project’s research and interaction plan.

The reporting process has four stages:

  • state-of-play report at start of project
  • monitoring report at mid-point of each funding period
  • interim report in connection with application for follow-on funding (applies to programmes divided into two funding periods)
  • final report upon project completion.

The purpose and contents of these reports are described briefly below. With the exception of the state-of-play report, the reporting shall be made on a form in the online services (SARA) of the Research Council of Finland. The projects should familiarise themselves with the content of the report form and start compiling the necessary information as soon as the project starts. A submitted monitoring or interim report can be used as a basis for a new report. The right to report lies with the principal investigator of the consortium, and they may also authorise other persons to fill in information on the report, if necessary. The reporting form is in Finnish and English, but the reporting language may be Finnish, Swedish or English.

How to fill in the reporting form (PDF)

We have compiled questions and answers on reporting on SRC-funded projects in a separate document, available in the Research Council of Finland’s image and media bank (in Finnish only). The document is a guide that clarifies the guidelines published on this page. Go to the document (in Finnish).

The monitoring and reporting data will be processed by RCF officials, members of the SRC and programme directors of SRC programmes. The right of public access to the reports is regulated under the Finnish Act on the Openness of Government Activities. This means that reports submitted to the RCF are in principle public documents. Read more under Document publicity on the RCF website. The reporting party must ensure that the reports do not contain secret information. The grounds for secrecy are defined in section 24 of the Act on the Openness of Government Activities.

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