Common Questions About Kuali Research

The upcoming Kuali Research solution (KR) will meet campus research administration needs, help streamline business processes and allow for development of institutional best practices. 

The following are questions we've been hearing about how KR will work at UC San Diego to create efficiency and consistency. 

  〉Will all proposals go through Kuali Research Proposal Development (PD)? 

At go live (January 21, 2020), these agreement types will go through Kuali: 

• Grants (including incoming subawards) 
• Contracts (including incoming subawards) 
• Unfunded Agreements (excluding Material Transfer Agreements) 
• Fellowships 
• Multi-Campus Agreements (MCAs) 
• Cooperative Agreements 
• Personnel Agreements (will not go in to KR PD, but will be entered into KR Award by SPOs) 
• Service Agreements (Incoming for Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor-Academic Affairs only) 
• Clinical Trials (both industry initiated and Principal Investigator initiated) 
• Non-SNAP (not SNAP RPPRs) 
• Supplemental Proposals 
• Grant Transfers  
• Amendments (will either get a KR PR or KR Award record depending on the amendment – may be processed by Department or SPO) 

 〉Do all proposals need to have a detailed budget? 

Yes. All proposals (with the exception of industry-initiated clinical trials) will be expected to have a detailed budget. 

In an effort to create a more collaborative and streamlined environment, the detailed budgeting functionality in KR will replace the need to work in Excel or other local methods. This can reduce errors. 

Detailed budgets will also allow users to utilize the proposal hierarchy feature in which collaborating units can create their own KR PD records and budgets then link them to the parent proposal. 

 〉Will the Excel and UC San Diego internal budget forms still need to be uploaded? 

No. The detailed budget will contain all of the needed information. However, any sponsor-required documentation such as budget justifications will need to be included. 

 〉Is System-to-System (S2S) only for National Institutes of Health (NIH)? 

No. KR PD submits to grants.gov, which is utilized by federal sponsors/agencies other than NIH including, but not limited to: 

• National Science Foundation (NSF) 
• Department of Defense (DOD) 
• Department of Energy (DOE) 
• National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) 

While there is a broad variety of agencies using grants.gov, not all opportunities will be available to submit S2S (such as NSF Collaborative Agreements). Users submitting to a federal agency should use the KR PD S2S Opportunity search to see if the package is available for S2S and if it will use KR PD to submit. 

 〉How will Kuali Research impact Principal Investigators? 

KR will have minimal impacts for PIs. PIs will continue to receive emails requesting them to certify, but the certifications will also contain research questions for them to answer. 

The email will link PIs to the certification / research questionnaire where they can answer and certify. This will still need to be done prior to routing the proposal for review. 

 〉Can Assist and Fastlane still be used? 

KR PD is the enterprise system of record and will now also serve as the submission system for all eligible S2S proposals. 

KR PD is also being utilized to meet sponsor AND institutional requirements and is the catalyst for compliance processes such as a Conflict of Interest.  

While the research portfolio at UC San Diego is diverse (not all federal) and while not all applications will be submitted through S2S, ALL proposals must meet both sponsor AND institutional requirements, which cannot be done if there is no KR PD record or if the record is created/routed post-submission to the sponsor. 

KR PD records need to be created, completed and routed to the SPO prior to the sponsor deadline or risk incomplete institutional requirements, missing compliance checks and no submission.