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 is different for individual projects, depending on the type of contribution that core facility personnel provide. Depending on their contributions to a project, BDS scientists should be considered collaborators at the same level as other academic colleagues who contribute intellectually and receive funding (grant or institutional support etc.) for work on a project.

Core facilities must charge for services rendered according to cost accounting practices set up at each institution.  Charging for data analysis services and authorship are not mutually exclusive. Charging does not preclude authorship on publications, grants, and/or patents provided that BDS scientists have contributed to the research in a substantial way. Similarly, authorship does not substitute for payment of expenses for services rendered.

We follow the general guidelines for authorship laid out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html] and ABRF guidelines [Recommended Guidelines for Authorship on Manuscripts https://abrf.org/authorship-guidelines]

The ABRF recommendation indicates that “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.”

General author guidelines:

• Author should make substantive contributions to the project, which can include combinations of these types of activities:
  • 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
• Each author should have participated sufficiently to the project to accept responsibility for the content of the manuscript

Acknowledgements

Regardless of whether a BDS scientist is included as an author BDS should also be acknowledged in written works as: We acknowledge support from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Biological Data Science Core, RRID:SCR_021766.

The Research Resource Identifiers (RRIDs) is a key component to the acknowledgement section as it aids U-BDS to be properly cited and referenced across work the core contributes to. If you would like to find out more about RRDS please visit: https://scicrunch.org/resources

Data Policies

Any data sets submitted to us for analysis and the output of that analysis will be stored on our servers for 60 days after return of findings. It is the responsibility of the requestor to backup all files on their own storage systems.

Requestors are responsible for verifying that the datasets to be used in an analysis can legally and otherwise be shared with BDS. By requesting that BDS access, transfer, or analyze a dataset, the requestor avers that the requested activity is allowed under all IRB, DUA, NIH, UAB, and other agreements/policies applicable the data in question.

Please contact us if you have any questions.