Guidelines | Bioimaging Unit | Newcastle University

If you've used our Facility, please recognise this and acknowledge it in your work, presentation and publications. Although you pay to access our microscopes, the full economic cost of running the facility is not passed on, this includes equipment depreciation, staff salaries and equipment service costs. The acknowledgment policy outlined below and here has been recommended by the Royal Microscopical Society (RMS) and we urge you to consider it when acknowledging work in the facility.

To maintain an up-to-date, cutting-edge and well-staffed imaging facility requires rolling investment. Over the last ten years this has come from the University as well as national funding bodies. To justify investment in us, we are assessed on the quantity and quality of publications that we facilitate as well as the number of usage hours and cost recovery. It is therefore important that you acknowledge us (as below) and inform us of your publications. This can be done through the dedicated publication tracker feature of Stratocore/ppms.

Please bear in mind that:

Core facilities staff are scientists. When they make an intellectual and/or experimental contribution to a publication they deserve to be recognised and acknowledged, just as any other co-author would be
The existence of core facilities depend in part on proper acknowledgment in publications. This is an important metric of value to most facilities, i.e. impact
Proper acknowledgment of facilities enables them to obtain financial/other support
It aids core facilities staff to advance their careers, adding to the overall sustainability of the facility and research environment
If core facilities staff have co-authorship where deserved, it will avoid the risk of
data misinterpretation, and help ensure the data are accurately conveyed and described

Using data generated within the BioImaging Unit

We appreciate that authorship decisions are generally made at the preparation stage of a manuscript, rather than at the initiation of the work, however the BioImaging Unit staff will now ask what the desired outcome of any new research project is and expect to be informed of any potential publications resulting from the work. If you are uncertain about co-authorship or have any questions or concerns about this, please discuss this issue with the facility manager in advance.

All publications resulting from the use of instruments within the facility should, at the very least, acknowledge the BioImaging Unit as a whole, e.g. ‘the authors gratefully acknowledge the BioImaging Unit for their support & assistance in this work’
Where users have had significant help from a particular member of the BioImaging Unit staff, or BioImaging Unit facility staff have generated additional data personally, this staff member should be acknowledged by name, alongside the centre if applicable, e.g. ‘the authors thank *** of the BioImaging Unit for their support & assistance in this work’
If scientists from the BioImaging Unit contribute more than just routine techniques, they should be co-authors of papers that use that data this includes:

Development or adaptation of protocols to suit samples or materials, (re)designing experiments, extensive data analysis and interpretation are not routine and constitute contributions meriting co-authorship
Simple acquisitions of raw data or routine sample preparations alone normally would not merit co-authorship but should still be acknowledged

Logo: You can also use our logo in a talk or a poster for a conference. Please contact the facility to obtain the latest and best quality version.

Paragraph for grant support

You may wish to add the generic supporting statement below to your funding application. We’d be happy to tailor the statement to your application or work with you on the particular imaging aspects of the application itself. If you have any questions, please contact the facility.

For funding applications, microscope access charges can be costed by the hour using the University’s MyProjects system. However, correctly costing microscopy charges on a grant application may require further consideration, for example: experimental design, facility support and imaging consumables all need to be costed appropriately. We encourage you to discuss your planned work using the Bioimaging Unit facility with us at the earliest opportunity, which would allow us to give expert advice on the types and amount of microscopy we would expect that you would request funding for in your project.

“All microscopy outlined in this grant proposal will be conducted using systems that are located in the Newcastle University BioImaging Unit. All instruments are supported, maintained and quality-controlled by a team of specialist microscopists with a combined microscopy experience of over fifty years. Team members will also provide advice on sample preparation (labelling), image acquisition and data analysis.”