Faculty & Staff

Record Keeping and Retention

Both Columbia University and U.S. government policy require all international projects to have clear procedures in place for maintaining supporting and guiding documentation related to each grant or contract funding their efforts.

The PI is responsible for ensuring that the international project meets these requirements and should take steps to:

• Retain any correspondence with the funding agency, any report submitted to the funding agency, or other such exchange
• Establish and maintain electronic and hard-copy filing systems
• Maintain files for:
  
  • Grant/contract expenditures vs. budget
  • Effort reporting
  • Procurement
  • Inventory, where applicable

For more information on retention and access to research data, see the Sponsored Project Handbook.