An important announcement regarding IDC rate for funded projects is that the university will no longer allow a reduced IDC rate without a published policy from the funding agency indicating a restriction in IDC rate.

Here is an abbreviated version of the announcement from the UF Administrative Memo October 2, 2013

F&A Costs, also known as indirect costs (IDC) or overhead costs, are fixed costs in support of research and other sponsored activities. F&A costs provide reimbursement for actual expenses that support extramural activities but cannot be directly charged to a project.

F&A costs result from shared services such as libraries; physical plant operation and maintenance; utility costs; general, departmental, and sponsored projects administrative expenses; and depreciation or use allowance for buildings and equipment.

Further, OMB Circular A-21 Section G. 1.a.(3). states “Each institution’s F&A cost rate process must be appropriately designed to ensure that federal sponsors do not in any way subsidize the F&A costs of other sponsors…”

Appropriate recovery of F&A for all activities is a necessary means to support those projects and to support compliance with state and federal laws and regulations. Under-recovery of the costs for any individual project places a disproportionate burden on UF rather than the sponsor of the activity.

Significant reductions in the state appropriations for the university’s activities have made the recovery of F&A costs on sponsored agreements more crucial to UF’s ability to provide the research infrastructure required for excellence in research and scholarship.

To this end, the university is reiterating its policy to budget the full federal negotiated F&A rate on all applications and awards unless that sponsor has a published policy restricting recovery or is a public entity listed on the Division of Sponsored Programs F&A Rates webpage.

Any questions can be directed to Stephanie Gray, Director, Division of Sponsored Research at 352-273-4062 or slgray@ufl.edu.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Public Access Policy ensures that published results of NIH-funded research are accessible to the public.

Effective July 1, 2013, NIH moved into the enforcement stage, requiring full compliance with the policy before continuing year (type 5) funds will be released.

Final peer-reviewed manuscripts must be posted to the NIH Manuscript Submission (NIHMS) system upon acceptance for publication and be made publicly available on PubMed Central (PMC) no later than 12 months after the official date of publication.

Here are some important points to consider:

• Awards are being withheld if there are publications not in compliance with the policy.
• Alternatively, awards have been released but restricted so no spending is allowed until publications are in compliance.
• NIH is identifying non-compliant articles during progress report submissions where the PI is instructed to identify new publications associated with the award. As a result, NIH has withheld the award funds.
• NIH has published a list of known non-compliant articles. The UF Office of Research and the UF Libraries have been reaching out to the authors of the articles to assist them in bringing these articles into compliance.

Please log in to myNCBI at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ to ensure you are in compliance or contact the UF Libraries for individual support.

NIH Policy Access Policy is available at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/.

UF resources to assist with compliance are available at http://guides.uflib.ufl.edu/nih.