Purpose:
To share policies and procedures for creating Non-employee Research Affiliate appointments, including visiting scholars, visiting researchers, unpaid research fellows, and unpaid postdocs.
Relevant Definitions:
Research Affiliates: a formal designation given to a non-employee researcher or scholar who is temporarily in residence at UT Austin and needs access to university systems as part of their collaborative work.
- May be appointed using any of these job profiles:
- Research Affiliate – Visiting Researcher/Scholar (A006)
- Research Affiliate Senior Research Fellow (A012)
- Research Affiliate Research Fellow (A011)
- Research Affiliate Postdoctoral (A010)
- Research Affiliates need to be sponsored by a faculty member within a department who will take responsibility for the visitor and serve as a point of contact
- Research Affiliate privileges are added as Job Classifications via the Workday BP. (See Step 13 of the WIG.)
- Research Affiliates meeting the following criteria require approval by the OVPR prior to being appointed:
- Will be in residence for more than 14 days
- Will conduct work in a research lab or will conduct research-related activity using UT facilities and resources
- Will be assigned an Affiliate EID or Member EID
- Will be appointed to a temporary unpaid research affiliate position per HOP 7-1020 (Research Titles)
VSVR: Visiting Researcher or Visiting Scholar; one type of research affiliate appointee; usually researchers/scholars from corporations or other academic institutions who are self-funded or independently funded by a third-party source. Visitors typically initiate request for nomination and collaborate on research that may benefit their own research endeavors in addition to furthering the University’s mission.
OVPR: The Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship, and Creative Endeavors; primary office overseeing research-related employment and nonemployee research affiliates.
Visual Compliance: The outside vendor web tool UT uses to ensure UT departments do not knowingly initiate ties to individuals or entities of concern to the U.S. government.
Process:
- Make sure your Research Affiliate has or creates a UT EID.
- Follow the OPVR’s Nonemployee (Unpaid) Research Affiliates (Visiting Researchers and Scholars) webpage instructions on how to appoint a Research Affiliate.
- If pre-approval from OVPR is required, submit the Nonemployee Research Affiliate Request for new or renewing nonemployee research affiliate appointments.
- UT Sponsor: Faculty member who is sponsoring the visitor.
- UT Organization Host: Department Chair. If the Department Chair is the UT Sponsor, then the Host will be Assoc. Dean Rob Crosnoe.
- Run a Visual Compliance check:
- For access to Visual Compliance see Authorizations
- To run a Visual Compliance check (from VPR):
- Log in and, click on Restricted Party Screening (RPS).
- Enter the name of the person (check spelling against an official document such as a passport).
- Enter the information you have available (address, former university/employer, etc.,) but most importantly the country of citizenship.
- In the Comment section, add the visitor's name/EID, department, and the name of the sponsoring professor. (This is important because Visual Compliance retains these searches and will send you an email if that person (or a person with a similar name) gets added to any of the lists and having that reference is useful.)
- You can search first by using Fuzzy Logic 2.
- If there are no problems, you can proceed.
- If there is a hit, the next step is to search using an Exact Match. Make sure you double check the spelling.
- If you get a positive hit, please forward to David Ivey, University Export Controls Officer.
- Save your search results as a PDF.
- Upon receiving approval from the OVPR for the nonemployee research affiliate position, issue the candidate a Non-Employee University Affiliate offer letter and the Non-Employee Research Affiliate Agreement. The agreement must be signed by the candidate, a representative from the candidate’s home organization, the UT Administrative Host, and the UT Sponsor.
- Request a Background Check for the Research Affiliate prior to initiating the Workday BP.
- Note: Although the OVPR’s detailed Workday instructions are useful, especially with respect to OVPR requirements, do NOT upload a copy of the Research Affiliate’s ID to the Workday BP.
- If pre-approval from OVPR is required, submit the Nonemployee Research Affiliate Request for new or renewing nonemployee research affiliate appointments.
- Use the Contract Contingent Worker BP WIG to add the Research Affiliate to Workday.
- As mentioned above, privileges are added as Job Classifications – descriptions of the 4 options are included in the WIG.
- The following items must be attached to the BP:
- Signed offer letter – Research Titles Offer Letter Templates
- Signed Non-Employee Research Affiliate Agreement
- Visual Compliance Report PDF (see 2.b.iii.)
- Approval email from OVPR
- Please add Comments explaining you are creating a Research Affiliate appointment and mention the sponsoring faculty member.
- If you did Not include this information in the "Assignment Details" section of the BP, then you Must include the following information in the comments as well:
- Visitor's Nationality: (insert nationality)
- Current Affiliation: (insert external organization)
- Research Activities: (insert title of research)
- Background check clear as of (insert date)
- Visual Compliance cleared as of (insert date).
- If you did Not include this information in the "Assignment Details" section of the BP, then you Must include the following information in the comments as well:
Related Policies:
- Procedures for Research Titles
- Office of the Vice President for Research Policies
- HOP 7-1020: Research Titles