Publication Guidelines for SCBioCRAFT facilities users

Researchers in lab

Guidelines for Core Users

Core facilities at SC BioCRAFT are supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health under award number P30 GM131959. This support depends on appropriate acknowledgment in publications and presentations of data generated using SC BioCRAFT core facilities.

All SC BioCRAFT users are therefore expected to acknowledge work performed on our instruments in all publications – peer-reviewed articles, conference presentations, posters, doctoral dissertations, and master’s theses, as well as in undergraduate research presentations, such as class presentations, poster presentations, etc.

We recommend that you use the following template to acknowledge the use of our facilities: “Data presented in this [publication/press release/presentation] was partially (or fully) collected using SC BioCRAFT facilities supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) of the National Institutes of Health under award number P30 GM131959.”

Funding agencies including NIGMS require and monitor these acknowledgments, and the NIH measures the success of the COBRE in part by them. Support of our facilities thus depends on these acknowledgments.

We ask all users of SC BioCRAFT facilities to email us (BET lab manager: Dr. Korneva, or CTRIC lab manager Dr. Nagy-Mehesz) the information on all the above-mentioned presentations and publications, which were at least partially based on data received from our instrumentation and acknowledge the usage of our facilities so we can include them in our yearly NIH reports.

How to acknowledge the help you received from our scientists?

According to the Authorship Guidelines from the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities: Personnel in core facilities provide essential services for their users and it is important to recognize their contributions to the scientific advancement of the projects. The type of recognition that is most appropriate may be different for individual projects, depending on the contribution that core facility personnel provide”. “Proper recognition of the contribution of scientists is consistent with the ethical and responsible conduct of research”. (Strange K. Authorship: why not just toss a coin? Am J PhysiolCell Physiol. 2008;295:C567–C575.)

Important reasons for acknowledging contributions from core facilities in publications, by co-authorship or by formal mention in the acknowledgments section, include:

  1. Core facility personnel are scientists. When they make a substantial intellectual and/or experimental contribution to a publication they deserve to be acknowledged just as any other co-author.
  2. The existence of core facilities depends in part on proper acknowledgment in publications. This is an important metric of the value of most core facilities. Proper acknowledgment of core facilities enables them to obtain financial and other support so that they may continue to provide their essential services in the best ways possible. It also helps core personnel to advance in their careers, adding to the overall health of the core facility.
  3. The ABRF recommendation was previously published in Angeletti et al. in 1999 (FASEB Journal, 13:595), “Intellectual interactions between resource and research scientists are essential to the success of each project. When this success results in publication, a citation in the acknowledgments section of a manuscript may be appropriate for routine analysis. However, contributions from resource scientists that involve novel resource laboratory work and insight, experimental design, or advanced data analysis that make a publication possible or significantly enhance its value require co-authorship as the appropriate acknowledgment.

Activities for which authorship are recommended:

  1. Author should make substantive contributions to the project
    • Conception, design of project, critical input, or original ideas
    • Acquisition of data, analysis, and interpretation, beyond routine practices
    • Draft the article or revise it critically for intellectual content
    • Write a portion of the paper (not just materials and methods section)
    • Intellectual contribution
    • Final authority for the approval of article
  2. Each author should have participated enough to accept responsibility for the content of the manuscript.

The following activities do not represent intellectual contributions to a project and would not constitute authorship:

  • Providing funding (department chair who has no intellectual input)
  • Collection of data (technical skill but not involved in interpretation of data)
  • General supervision of research group, but no intellectual input into the project

All contributors that do not meet the criteria of authorship should be recognized in the acknowledgments section, for example:

  • Paid technical help
  • Writing assistance
  • Financial and material support
  • Scientific advice

Core facilities must charge for services rendered according to cost accounting practices set up at each institution. Charging for services does not preclude authorship on manuscripts provided the core laboratory individual has contributed to the research in a substantial way. If authorship is anticipated, it is preferably established at the beginning of the project so that both the customer and the core researcher are cognizant of each other’s criteria. - https://www.abrf.org/authorship-guidelines.