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Audit of researchers’ timekeeping

A news story in the current issue of Nature (449, 512-513; 2007) reports on how the US National Science Foundation (NSF) is investigating how researchers account for time spent on federally funded projects. Auditors have found that the records kept are often not accurate, undermining the ability of the NSF to ensure that its grants are spent appropriately.

Although the audits may simply reflect record-keeping lapses, they could have significant financial impacts. For instance, in a grant- rich school such as the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, cutting back on indirect costs by just 0.5% would save $600,000.

An Editorial in the same issue of the journal (Nature 449, 508; 2007) points out that “the NSF hasn’t decided to conduct the audits arbitrarily. Whistleblowers at two universities highlighted cases in which researchers failed to tell the National Institutes of Health (NIH) about the amount of time they spent on projects it had funded. The universities involved subsequently repaid the money.”, concluding: “These NSF efforts may, in time, serve as an instructive template for the NIH, a far larger agency that has done little as yet to monitor its grantees’ effort reporting. With so much money at stake, a little extra paperwork is not necessarily a bad idea.”

You can add your comments to the news story online at the journal website.

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