Acknowledgement Guidelines for University-Wide Core User Facilities (UWCUF)

Rationale: This document provides guidance on the requirements for proper acknowledgement of UWCUF. These facilities play an important role in the institution’s ability to: compete for external research funding, conduct cutting-edge research, and recruit/retain top faculty, students, and researchers. UWCUF are shared research resources that provide access to instruments, technologies, as well as expert consultation and other services to research investigators.  Proper recognition of these facilities must be given on all manuscripts, posters, presentations, and other scholarly work.  Acknowledging usage of these facilities and the contributions of staff is synergistic with ethical and responsible research conduct and helps to demonstrate the impact of UWCUF to university administrators.  The University supports UWCUF with space, capital investments, maintenance subsidies, staff support (technical, administrative, financial, IT, infrastructure support), and other subsidies.  User fees do not cover the entire cost of sustainably operating these core facilities, so all work performed within these facilities benefits from university support.  Payment for: research services, staff assistance, or independent use of equipment does not discharge UWCUF users from their responsibility to appropriately acknowledge the facility.  These guidelines are compatible with the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which provide guidance for defining the roles & responsibilities of authors and contributors (www.icmje.org).

Acknowledgement Requirement:  An acknowledgment of the UWCUF must be included any time equipment is utilized, services are received, or staff contribute.  Please use a format like the examples below when acknowledging a specific UWCUF.  Co-authorship should be considered and discussed for any researcher that makes significant intellectual contributions in designing experiments, developing methods, providing advanced data collection and/or analysis, or device fabrication (e.g. designing process flows, developing methods, providing advanced fabrication services).  These discussions should ideally occur at the outset of a project. 

Acknowledgement Examples for The Materials Characterization Laboratory (MCL)

Mandatory Minimum – Independent use of MCL resources

“The co-authors acknowledge use of the Penn State Materials Characterization Lab”

Example 1 - Independent use of MCL resources and guidance from staff

“The co-authors acknowledge the Penn State Materials Characterization Lab for use of the Bruker Vertex 70 FTIR and staff X for helpful discussions on sample preparation.”

Example 2 - Routine data collected by MCL staff (data interpreted by the user)

"The co-authors acknowledge the Penn State Materials Characterization Lab for use of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Verios G4 SEM and staff X for collecting the images shown in Figure Y.” ​​​​​​​

Acknowledgement Examples for Nanofab​​​​​​​ (NF)

Mandatory Minimum – Independent use of NF resources 

“The co-authors acknowledge the Nanofabrication Lab at Penn State.” 

Example 1 - Independent use of NF resources and guidance from staff  

“The co-authors acknowledge the Nanofabrication Lab at Penn State for use of the toolset and staff X and Y for helpful discussions on device fabrication.” 

Example 2 – Routine fabrication by staff and utilization of NF resources 

“The co-authors acknowledge the Nanofabrication Lab at Penn State for use of the toolset and staff X for assisting with the fabrication.” 

Example 3 – Independent use of Nanofab resources and use of specialized processes on a tool with assistance of staff X 

“The co-authors acknowledge the Nanofabrication Lab at Penn State for use of the cleanroom toolset including the Raith EBPG5200Plus and staff X for assistance with the fabrication.” 

Acknowledgement Examples for 2D Crystal Consortium​​​​​​​ (2DCC-MIP)
Users must acknowledge NSF award DMR-2039351 in all publications, presentations, websites, press releases, etc, for which use of the 2DCC facility either as samples or a user research project is a part of the content. If any of the samples or research originated from the 2DCC prior to June 1, 2021 please consult with 2DCC faculty at time of publication for proper acknowledgement of the 2DCC support as it may also include DMR-1539916 in addition to DMR-2039351.

Material Samples-only:
“[Your specific sample(s)] for this publication was provided by The Pennsylvania State University Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium – Materials Innovation Platform (2DCC-MIP) which is supported by NSF cooperative agreement DMR-2039351”.

User Research Projects:
“This study is based upon research conducted at The Pennsylvania State University Two-Dimensional Crystal Consortium – Materials Innovation Platform (2DCC-MIP) which is supported by NSF cooperative agreement DMR-2039351”.