This post is about a simple yes/no question :
Is there a database of projects which has been funded by the NRF?
The question relates to being able to link scholarly output to grants, directly in the deposit metadata. This question was inpsired by the similar functionality in Zenodo, where a database of all of the H2020 and FP7 projects can be searched at deposit time.
I believe that this is a question for Lazarus Matizirofa, who has recently been giving roadshow presentations on NEXUS (some older info here: http://www.liasa-new.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/lazarus_matizirofa.pdf).
@NiklasZimmer_4973 thanks very much. I've just edited the post to remove the clear-text email address (I hope Lazarus can join us here to discuss this topic).
The end goal is for deposits to repositories, particularly national open access and archival repositories can be properly linked with the funding agency or specific grant at deposit time. This would help the funding agencies better track the usage of their funds.
Is anything like this under way ? How can we start experimenting with it ?
@brucellino thank you in return. It's my first post here, and I still have to learn some of the rules. My apologies for pasting the plain-text eMail address. Lazarus is a very helpful person at the NRF, and I am sure he would be very willing to field questions regarding this question. Further to the question - apologies also for not being able to answer "yes/no", by the way! - we are currently looking into how our Researcher Management System Converis may be integrated with our IDR (powered by Figshare, soon to go live), so that GRID-IDs, grant-IDs, ORCIDs and institution-specific dois can all be integrated (PLUS one day actionable, i.e. machine-readable DMPs as well), without any hassle for admin staff and researchers. Right now, it seems an unnecessary mess, but I believe that once all the willing partners have been found, there will be a way very soon.
Hey, no problem ! Please feel free to poke about and do things - it's my job to make sure this stays a civilised place to discuss 
This seems to be quite the topic of discussion... There's a clear need for a CRIS at most institutes, and I'm curious about how that will develop. I'm sure you're in touch with the right people. Have a look about in the users section of the forum - you might be surprised who's registered here.
My interest is developing some re-usable bits of infrastructure, and addressing the usage or measurement thereof, of data products deposited in repositories. I was quite inspired, as I originally mentioned, by the feature in Zenodo, where you could reference the object's funding sources
This is the only place I've seen the link between grants and research objects so far. My understanding is that it exists thanks to OpenAIRE, who have a database of projects funded by the European Commission.
While we do not have OpenAIRE, I would be very surprised if we (NRF, DST) didn't have a funded projects database. It seems that this should indeed fall under the NRF's own Open Access Mandate (if you're going to insist on Open Data, then ... open your data !). But clearly it's not linked to any repository deposit workflows. I wouldn't be surprised either if the data was "dirty" - in several disparate databases, with varying schema , etc.
All we really need though is to extract the grant number or project name, and have distributed or accessible to participating repos.
The best case scenario, as I see it would be some telemetry on repos whereby they talk back to the funder to say that "project so-and-so was referenced when this object (doi) was deposited at this repository (oai-pmh endpoint)". That way they have all the data they need, already up to date, when it comes time at the year end to report.
Do you think such a thing would be feasible ?
Hi again, it most definitely is feasible. In fact, there is a strong cost-saving argument to be made here, in times of austerity budgets, i.e. systematic inefficiencies can no longer be afforded. One big, bad story of recently lost grant money should suffice to convince on an institutional level.
Some of the current inefficiencies appears to be that the designation/number/ID is left up to different people to assign (with different or no rules, and no cross-checking or enforcing machanism), and that a lot of the further processing / management of the grants happens on paper.
I am not an expert on this topic at all, so I stand to be corrected on the above. I am just interested in bringing all these possibilities to life, so that the administrative burden on staff and reserachers can be lessened, and less time and money are wasted while we could all be doing more interesting things than trying to reinvent excel.