Using the Project Tracking System

ICER's Project Tracking System is a tool to help track the impact of ICER resources on your work. Whereas the Contact Form allows you to manage system aspects of your projects (accounts, quota, etc), the Project Tracking System is a supplement to share with ICER what research products have resulted from or used ICER resources.

The outcomes you provide will help ICER share its impact with the university and continue growing to meet your research and teaching needs.

A video walkthrough of the Project Tracking System is also available.

Editing projects

After logging in with your MSU credentials, you will be presented with projects that you can edit and those that you can view. Viewers cannot make changes, but editors can give other project members edit access.

Project PIs are initially the only editors of each project.

Grants

To add a grant, click the "Add Grant" button on your project's page. Here, you can search for grants based on title, a PI's name or MSU NetID, or a PI's ORCID. The first two options will search MSU's grant database, whereas the third will use the PI's information reported to ORCID.

Alternatively, you can automatically import grants using the ORCIDs of all users on the project by clicking the "Import from Project Members' ORCIDs" button. This requires at least one project member to add their ORCID to their profile.

For grants added using these methods, please select the project PI's role on the grant. Most often, this will be "Principal Investigator".

Finally, you can manually enter a grant using the "Enter grant manually" button. Please only use the "Other funding agency" field if you select "Other" in the "Funding Agency" dropdown.

If the grant you added is not completely accurate, you can edit fields afterwards from the project page in the "Grants" table. Select the pencil icon in the row of the grant you would like to edit.

Publications

To add a publication, click the "Add Publication" button on your project's page. Here, you can search for publications using a DOI, bibliographic code, or ORCID. When entering an ORCID, all publications associated with that user's ORCID will appear.

Alternatively, you can automatically import publications using the ORCIDs of all users on the project by clicking the "Import from Project Members' ORCIDs" button. This requires at least one project member to add their ORCID to their profile.

Finally, you can manually enter a publication using the "Enter publication manually" button.

Other research outputs

For any other research outputs that used ICER resources (posters, software, datasets, etc), you can use the "Add Research Output" button on your project's page. Here, you can add whatever you like along with a short description.

Updating the field of science

To update the Field of Science for your project, click the "Update Project Information" button on your project's page. All projects initially start with "Other" as the Field of Science.

Updating other fields

To update a project's description or add users, you must use the Contact Form Access Management page. All fields will sync between the Contact From and the Project Tracking System.

Note that this can only be done by the PI. Project Editors in the Project Tracking System do not have any permissions on the Contact Form.

Delegating editing to other project members

To allow other users on your project to edit grants, publications, or research outputs, in the "Users" table, select the icon in the "Actions" column. You can use the "Role" dropdown to set the user as "Editor," then save.

Note that users added as Editors can only make changes in the Project Tracking System, not the Contact Form.

Adding your ORCID

To add your ORCID to your profile, select your username in the top right corner, and click the "User Profile" button. You can add your 16-digit ORCID (with dashes) and click the "Update ORCID" button to save.

By doing this, you can easily import grants and publications from any user on a project that has added their ORCID to their profile.

Emailing your project's users

Editors can easily email all of their project's users by clicking the button that says "Email Project Users" in the "Users" section on their project's page. We recommend using this feature to request that all users add their ORCIDs to make grant and publication search easier.

Reporting issues

If you encounter an issue using the Project Tracking System, please send us a ticket using the Contact Form using the subject "Project Tracking System".